Social Psychological Bulletin

Consistent Kindness: Money Allocation and Kind Act Decisions Are Regulated by a ‘Welfare Trade-Off Ratio’

2026-04-09T00:16:20+00:00

Is kindness regulated by a cost-benefit ratio? Previous research suggests that money allocation decisions are regulated by a ‘welfare trade-off ratio’ (WTR) that reflects the weight attached to the actor’s welfare relative to the recipient’s welfare. Here we replicate this research, and extend it by creating a new measure—The Kindness Questionnaire—which asks which real-world acts of kindness, previously rated for cost and benefit, participants would perform for others. In Study 1 (n = 6,601) money allocation (MA) and Kindness Questionnaire (KQ) decisions for family, friends, colleagues and strangers were highly consistent with an underlying WTR (~92%); more consistent than would be expected by chance; and generally more consistent than with cost or benefit alone. WTRs were high (~0.81); and, for money allocation, declined with social distance. In Study 2 (n = 8,492) MA and KQ decisions for neighbors were highly consistent with an underlying WTR (~89%); more consistent than would be expected by chance; and generally more consistent than with cost or benefit alone. WTRs were high (~0.75). In both studies, The Kindness Questionnaires showed good convergent, divergent and incremental validity. These studies corroborate ‘welfare tradeoff ratio’ theory, establish proof of principle for a new way of measuring kindness, and provide new tools for measuring kindness to colleagues, strangers and neighbors.

Higher Dispersion and Volume of Consumer Product Ratings Increases Product Preferences

2026-03-26T01:08:53+00:00

We examined the impact of dispersion and volume of product ratings on product preferences. Earlier work shows that extremely positive exemplars have a disproportionate influence on people’s decision-making when they seek desirable outcomes. We examined if the occurrence of both extremely positive and extremely negative review ratings changed people’s preferences, even if the average review ratings remained similar, in a within-person experiment that simulated an online purchasing website. Participants (N = 281 adults residing in the USA) repeatedly chose one out of four products with review ratings. We experimentally varied the dispersion and volume of these rating scores. As hypothesized, individuals preferred products accompanied by a high volume and highly dispersed set of review ratings. The results hold important implications for understanding the influence of reviews on consumer purchasing intentions and behavior.

Temporal Aspects of Mimicry and Costs of Mimicry: The Link Between Mimicry, Its Duration, and Self-Esteem of The Mimickee

2026-03-17T02:43:33+00:00

Experiments that manipulate the presence of mimicry generally find that mimicry benefits the mimicker. These results led to the "mimicry-as-a-social-glue" hypothesis, which considers mimicry as a mechanism responsible for starting and maintaining social relations. There are two novel aspects in the present pre-registered experiment. First, the experiment examines temporal aspects by including four conditions: no mimicry, mimicry during the first five minutes, the last five minutes, or mimicry present throughout the interaction. By doing so, we contribute to ongoing efforts to standardise mimicry methodology. Second, this explores the underexplored issue of potential costs associated with mimicry and challenges the "mimicry-as-a-social-glue" hypothesis. The results demonstrate a relationship between temporal factors and the effects of mimicry. Participants who were mimicked during the final five minutes of the interaction reported significantly lower self-esteem compared to those mimicked during the initial five minutes. However, no significant differences in self-esteem were found between the no mimicry condition and mimicry during the first five minutes, nor between the final five minutes condition and mimicry sustained throughout the entire interaction. Similarly, no significant differences were observed between the no mimicry condition and the condition in which mimicry was sustained for the entire interaction. These findings suggest that the costs and benefits associated with mimicry depend on its temporal dynamics.

Counter-Intuitive Findings on Affect and Ideology Likely Reflect Collider Bias: Commentary on Turner-Zwinkels et al., 2025

2026-03-17T02:43:37+00:00

A paper recently published by Turner-Zwinkels et al. (2025) contains a peculiar set of findings: using cross-sectional analyses of international survey data, one study found that the more partisans agree with their co-partisans on matters of policy and ideology, the less they like the party they all support, whereas in another study these variables were uncorrelated. These negative and null relationships are counter-intuitive and conflict with prior findings showing that greater perceived ideological similarity tends to increase liking. Turner-Zwinkels et al. suggest these results could be a product of optimal distinctiveness theory. However, I suggest that this result is a statistical artefact caused by collider bias. I explain how collider bias could create this result even if the true relationship between liking and ideological similarity is positive. I demonstrate the plausibility of this explanation using simulations and a re-analysis of Turner-Zwinkels et al.’s data.

Neither Asian nor American: How COVID-19 Impacted Asian Americans’ Identity and Well-Being

2026-02-24T04:15:59+00:00

Asians and Asian Americans have experienced increased discrimination due to COVID-19. Building on the rejection-identification model (RIM; Branscombe et al., 1999) and the rejection-disidentification model (RDIM; Jasinskaja-Lahti et al., 2009), we sought to examine how COVID-19 discrimination has impacted Asian Americans’ identities and well-being. Asian and Asian American individuals currently residing in the United States were recruited to participate in our study. The relations between perceived COVID-19 discrimination, identification, and well-being were examined correlationally (Study 1) and experimentally (Studies 2 and 3). Across 3 studies, COVID-19 discrimination is associated with increased levels of anxiety and stress but decreased identification with being American. At the same time, perceived discrimination was unrelated to participants’ Asian (Study 1, 2, and 3) and specific ethnic (Study 3) identities. In Study 2, we experimentally demonstrated that reading about the negative impact of COVID-19 on Asian Americans interacted with perceived discrimination to decrease the extent to which participants identified as American, which has implications for anxiety and stress. Results from Study 2 supported the RDIM predictions and was replicated in a US-born sample in Study 3. Our studies suggest that Asian and Asian Americans’ well-being is harmed through the decrease of a positive identity (i.e., being an American) without the compensation of another positive identity (i.e., being Asian or being a specific ethnicity) to protect them from the negative impactive of COVID-19 discrimination. Thus, Asian Americans need support now more than ever.

Intellectual Humility: Validation and Comparison of Four Self-Report Scales in the German Context

2026-01-16T00:17:20+00:00

Intellectual humility (IH), the recognition of one’s intellectual limitations, is a promising characteristic to tackle societal conflicts such as affective political polarization. Despite increasing research on IH in recent years, most research has been conducted in the USA, probably due to a lack of scales that are validated in languages other than English. Our objective was to offer researchers in the German context several IH measures to choose from depending on their specific research question. Therefore, we validated and compared four established IH scales within the German context. Items of three widely-used IH scales (CIHS, SIHS, LIHS) were translated from English into German by two independent researchers, rated by experts (n = 8), and pre-tested (n = 13). We then assessed the structural, convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of the scales plus an existing Swiss-German IH scale (IHS) in a preregistered online-survey (N = 698), representative for Germany regarding age, gender, and education. Discriminant validity was assessed via social desirability, cognitive closure, need for cognition, HEXACO honesty-humility, and openness, and incremental validity regarding affective polarization. Results showed that the IHS did not meet all of our pre-registered criteria, potentially due to cross-cultural differences between Germany and Switzerland. However, the three translated scales were comparable to the original English scales regarding structural, convergent, and discriminant validity. The SIHS showed the best incremental validity in predicting less affective polarization towards opinion-based outgroups. Limitations and directions for future research regarding IH in German-speaking contexts are discussed.

Exploring Self-Reported Helping, Punishment, and Moral Courage Within and Across Group Boundaries: Implications for the Inclusion of Others in Self Scale

2025-10-10T01:05:41+00:00

Altruism may not be a unitary concept but may include behaviorally dissociable subfactors. Here, we examined the effects of social distance within and across group boundaries on three facets of altruism: help giving, peer punishment, and moral courage. Using real-life scenarios presented as vignettes, participants were asked to indicate the likelihood that they would engage in the described behaviors across three different social settings: a familiar low-distance in-group, an unfamiliar high-distance in-group, and a hostile out-group. We used the Inclusion of Others in Self (IOS) scale to measure perceived closeness to members of the described social group. We hypothesized that help giving would be most and moral courage least sensitive to variations in social distance. In both studies, results revealed no significant differences in help giving across variations in social distance but a higher self-reported likeliness to show morally courageous acts in the familiar and close in-group compared to the other groups. The results for peer punishment were only partially consistent, following a similar pattern to moral courage. IOS scores discriminated between high and low-distance in-groups, as expected, but did not discriminate well between a high-distance in-group and hostile out-group. On the other hand, facet-specific trait scores correlated significantly with vignette responses. When the three facets were considered together across all vignettes, in-group favoritism became apparent. The studies contribute to our understanding of the social context conditions of altruistic behaviors and call for the refinement of experimental and self-report measures in the study of altruistic behavior.

Ease of Retrieval in Evaluative Conditioning

2025-08-28T00:53:58+00:00

Evaluative conditioning (EC), the change in the liking of a conditioned stimulus due to its pairing with a positive or negative stimulus, is a key effect in attitude formation. Current theories on EC emphasize the role of memory in EC, assuming that explicit memory on the stimulus pairings strengthens the EC effect. In this paper, we extend the scope of memory’s role in EC by focusing on whether the metacognitive experience of ease during memory retrieval influences EC effects beyond the effects of the retrieved memory content. In two preregistered experiments (total N = 392), we tested for ease-of-retrieval effects in EC by letting participants recall few vs. many unconditioned stimuli before giving an evaluative judgment. Although the manipulation was successful in manipulating ease-of-retrieval, we found no evidence for an influence of ease-of-retrieval effects resulting from the experimental manipulation on EC. However, the subjectively perceived ease of retrieval was indeed associated with stronger EC effects. Overall, these findings show no evidence that ease resulting from an instruction to recollect more/less US information contributes to EC effects but leave open whether ease-of-retrieval from other sources contributes to EC effects.

(Almost) No Evidence of Self–Other Differences in Risk Preferences and Cognitive Processing Among Professionals in Contextualized Risky-Choice Framing Tasks

2025-08-18T23:54:29+00:00

A substantial body of research has shown that risky decisions made for others often differ from those made for oneself. However, findings remain mixed, and there is still ongoing discussion about when and for whom self-other differences are most likely to emerge or be strongest. Building on previous research, which has primarily focused on lay samples and the outcomes of decision-making rather than the underlying processes, the current study reports on four preregistered experiments examining self–other differences across various professional domains, while also testing the commonly assumed cognitive mechanisms. Participants (total N = 1,337) were financial advisors at a large trade union (Experiment 1), leaders at a local government organization (Experiment 2) and a large hospital (Experiment 3), and a general sample of employees and leaders (Experiment 4). Participants completed a risky choice problem tailored to reflect their professional background (Experiments 1–3), where they were asked to choose between a safe and risky option either for themselves or for a hypothetical other, in both gain and loss frames. They then reported the extent to which they engaged in intuitive and analytical processing, and their emotional arousal. There was no evidence for consistent self-other differences in risk and no moderation by frame. In addition, there were no self-other differences in cognitive processing or affect. However, there was a main effect of framing in all experiments—that is, greater risk-seeking in loss (vs. gain) frames.

Gender Discrimination and Hegemonic Masculinity in Study Fields: A Multi-Level Analysis Among Female and Male Students in Vocational Education

2025-08-18T23:54:23+00:00

A substantial body of research has documented significant variations across fields of study in the prevalence of discrimination experiences among women. In the present research, we investigated the role of normative climates in fields of study by focusing on the shared endorsement of hegemonic masculinity on the experiences and anticipations of gender discrimination among female and male students. We recruited a large sample of students attending upper-secondary vocational schools (N = 1,298), segmented into various fields of study (k = 35). We assessed students’ endorsement of hegemonic masculinity (whose effects were estimated at the field level), along with perceived and anticipated gender discrimination (estimated at the individual level). Multi-level structural equation modelling revealed cross-level interactions consistent with our hypotheses. Female students, particularly in fields of study scoring high in hegemonic masculinity, perceived and anticipated more gender discrimination than their male counterparts. These gender differences were either weaker or absent in fields with a climate low in hegemonic masculinity. These findings highlight the importance of addressing the role of normative climates occurring in local educational contexts to adequately determine the experiences of female and male students.