According to terror management theory, humans avoid death anxiety by embedding themselves within ... more According to terror management theory, humans avoid death anxiety by embedding themselves within cultural worldviews that allow them to perceive themselves as more than mortal animals. However, individuals also differ in their trait-like tendency to dissociate from other animals. In six studies, we tested whether individuals who perceive themselves as more similar to animals (high-perceived similarity of the self to animals [PSSA]) invest more in creativity for terror management than low-PSSA individuals, but are also more vulnerable to experiencing anxiety and existential concerns. Supporting our hypotheses, PSSA was associated with investment in creativity and arts, especially after death primes (Studies 3 and 4). High-PSSA individuals had heightened trait anxiety and death-thought accessibility (Studies 5 and 6), and showed increased state anxiety following a negative feedback about their creativity (Study 6). Findings highlight the role of PSSA as a personality variable predicti...
U.S.-based research suggests conservatism is linked with less concern about contracting coronavir... more U.S.-based research suggests conservatism is linked with less concern about contracting coronavirus and less preventative behaviors to avoid infection. Here, we investigate whether these tendencies are partly attributable to distrust in scientific information, and evaluate whether they generalize outside the U.S., using public data and recruited representative samples across four studies (Ntotal=37,790). In Studies 1–3, we examine these relationships in the U.S., yielding converging evidence for a sequential indirect effect of conservatism on compliance through scientific (dis)trust and infection concern. In Study 4, we compare these relationships across 19 distinct countries, finding that they are strongest in North America, extend to support for lockdown restrictions, and that the indirect effects do not fully appear in any other country in our sample other than Indonesia. These effects suggest that rather than a general distrust in science, whether or not conservatism predicts co...
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an immense loss of human life, increased economic uncertainty, a... more The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an immense loss of human life, increased economic uncertainty, and negatively impacted individuals' mental health and close relationships. At the same time, experts have noted a concurrent improvement in many environmental quality indicators, including significant decreases in both localized air pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions. These positive trends are due to changes in human behavior necessitated by social distancing and self-quarantining measures (e.g., reduced car and air travel). However, there is already evidence that these improvements in environmental quality are only temporary. This suggests that more intentional efforts will be necessary in order to maintain positive environmental benefits and address major environmental issues as the world gets back to some version of pre-pandemic economic and social activity. Still, our collective experience over the course of the pandemic provides clear evidence that such change is poss...
The COVID‐19 pandemic has generated unprecedented human loss and financial difficulties worldwide... more The COVID‐19 pandemic has generated unprecedented human loss and financial difficulties worldwide. In line with recent calls for social sciences to help collective efforts to address COVID‐19, we investigated the link between peace and pandemic preparedness, advancing the literatures on negative (i.e., absence of direct violence) and positive peace (i.e., absence of structural violence and presence of equality) and governments' crisis preparedness as well as crisis relief efforts. Two studies tested whether both positive and negative peace predict pandemic preparedness, operationalized as COVID‐19 tests, cases, and positivity rates, during the onset of the pandemic. Study 1 did so at the national level across 155 countries; Study 2 did so at a local level, across 3144 counties within the United States. Even after controlling for population size, population density, GDP, and amount of air travel, higher levels of both negative and positive peace predicted a greater number of COVID‐19 tests per one million people, fewer overall COVID‐19 cases, and a lower positivity rate. These findings point to the possibility that by promoting peace, governments and the international community could potentially become better prepared to handle future pandemics and other crises.
In a sample of 916 doctoral students from 144 universities across the United States, we examined ... more In a sample of 916 doctoral students from 144 universities across the United States, we examined psychology graduate students’ experiences in their programs, as well as their mental health, well-being, and optimism during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a path model, we found that students’ psychological experiences in their programs (i.e., social belonging, threat, and challenge) were associated with better mental health and well-being, which in turn was associated with greater optimism about the future during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings were also corroborated in students’ open-ended responses regarding how COVID-19 has impacted their lives. Findings varied by racial, gender, and sexual identities, as racial minorities, LGBTQ+ students, and women expressed more negative psychological experiences in their programs. We outline suggestions for graduate programs to support their graduate students, which include facilitating social connection, providing encouragement, a...
Abstract Although individual differences in dispositional gratitude have been shown to relate wit... more Abstract Although individual differences in dispositional gratitude have been shown to relate with both personal well-being and intergenerational beneficence, no work has yet examined whether trait gratitude is correlated with consideration of future consequences for one's self. Across six studies (total N = 2758) we find robust evidence for a significant and positive correlation between dispositional gratitude and consideration of future consequences (CFC): r = 0.33, SE = 0.02, Z = 16.82, p
Harm-centric accounts of judgments of moral wrongdoing argue that moral judgments are fundamental... more Harm-centric accounts of judgments of moral wrongdoing argue that moral judgments are fundamentally based on appraisals of harm. However, past research has failed to operationally discriminate harm appraisals from appraisals related to injustice. Four studies carefully discriminated harm qua pain/suffering from injustice, alongside appraisals related to impurity, authority, and disloyalty. Appraisals of injustice outperformed appraisals of harm as independent predictors of the judged wrongness of recalled offenses (Study 1). Studies 2a, 2b, and 3 extended these findings using a diverse range of wrongful acts and two different cultural samples—the United States and Greece. In addition to the strong relevance of injustice appraisals, these latter studies uncovered substantial contributions of impurity and authority appraisals. The results inform debates on moral pluralism and the foundations of moral cognition.
Building on independent versus interdependent self-construal theory, three studies provide initia... more Building on independent versus interdependent self-construal theory, three studies provide initial empirical evidence for a third way of construing the self: the constructivist self-construal. People with a constructivist view perceive the self as constantly changing (impermanence), as a collection of distinct phenomena from moment to moment (discontinuity), as lacking an essence (disentification), and as psychologically overlapping with other people and things in the universe (boundlessness/boundaries). In Study 1, we piloted a new Constructivist Self-Construal Scale and established preliminary evidence for the discriminant validity of the scale. Studies 2 and 3 found that across seven countries with diverse cultural backgrounds, the self was consistently cognitively represented on the four dimensions of constructivist self. People from collectivistic cultures where Buddhist philosophy is more prevalent tended to endorse the dimensions of the constructivist self-construal to a grea...
According to terror management theory, humans avoid death anxiety by embedding themselves within ... more According to terror management theory, humans avoid death anxiety by embedding themselves within cultural worldviews that allow them to perceive themselves as more than mortal animals. However, individuals also differ in their trait-like tendency to dissociate from other animals. In six studies, we tested whether individuals who perceive themselves as more similar to animals (high-perceived similarity of the self to animals [PSSA]) invest more in creativity for terror management than low-PSSA individuals, but are also more vulnerable to experiencing anxiety and existential concerns. Supporting our hypotheses, PSSA was associated with investment in creativity and arts, especially after death primes (Studies 3 and 4). High-PSSA individuals had heightened trait anxiety and death-thought accessibility (Studies 5 and 6), and showed increased state anxiety following a negative feedback about their creativity (Study 6). Findings highlight the role of PSSA as a personality variable predicti...
U.S.-based research suggests conservatism is linked with less concern about contracting coronavir... more U.S.-based research suggests conservatism is linked with less concern about contracting coronavirus and less preventative behaviors to avoid infection. Here, we investigate whether these tendencies are partly attributable to distrust in scientific information, and evaluate whether they generalize outside the U.S., using public data and recruited representative samples across four studies (Ntotal=37,790). In Studies 1–3, we examine these relationships in the U.S., yielding converging evidence for a sequential indirect effect of conservatism on compliance through scientific (dis)trust and infection concern. In Study 4, we compare these relationships across 19 distinct countries, finding that they are strongest in North America, extend to support for lockdown restrictions, and that the indirect effects do not fully appear in any other country in our sample other than Indonesia. These effects suggest that rather than a general distrust in science, whether or not conservatism predicts co...
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an immense loss of human life, increased economic uncertainty, a... more The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an immense loss of human life, increased economic uncertainty, and negatively impacted individuals' mental health and close relationships. At the same time, experts have noted a concurrent improvement in many environmental quality indicators, including significant decreases in both localized air pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions. These positive trends are due to changes in human behavior necessitated by social distancing and self-quarantining measures (e.g., reduced car and air travel). However, there is already evidence that these improvements in environmental quality are only temporary. This suggests that more intentional efforts will be necessary in order to maintain positive environmental benefits and address major environmental issues as the world gets back to some version of pre-pandemic economic and social activity. Still, our collective experience over the course of the pandemic provides clear evidence that such change is poss...
The COVID‐19 pandemic has generated unprecedented human loss and financial difficulties worldwide... more The COVID‐19 pandemic has generated unprecedented human loss and financial difficulties worldwide. In line with recent calls for social sciences to help collective efforts to address COVID‐19, we investigated the link between peace and pandemic preparedness, advancing the literatures on negative (i.e., absence of direct violence) and positive peace (i.e., absence of structural violence and presence of equality) and governments' crisis preparedness as well as crisis relief efforts. Two studies tested whether both positive and negative peace predict pandemic preparedness, operationalized as COVID‐19 tests, cases, and positivity rates, during the onset of the pandemic. Study 1 did so at the national level across 155 countries; Study 2 did so at a local level, across 3144 counties within the United States. Even after controlling for population size, population density, GDP, and amount of air travel, higher levels of both negative and positive peace predicted a greater number of COVID‐19 tests per one million people, fewer overall COVID‐19 cases, and a lower positivity rate. These findings point to the possibility that by promoting peace, governments and the international community could potentially become better prepared to handle future pandemics and other crises.
In a sample of 916 doctoral students from 144 universities across the United States, we examined ... more In a sample of 916 doctoral students from 144 universities across the United States, we examined psychology graduate students’ experiences in their programs, as well as their mental health, well-being, and optimism during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a path model, we found that students’ psychological experiences in their programs (i.e., social belonging, threat, and challenge) were associated with better mental health and well-being, which in turn was associated with greater optimism about the future during the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings were also corroborated in students’ open-ended responses regarding how COVID-19 has impacted their lives. Findings varied by racial, gender, and sexual identities, as racial minorities, LGBTQ+ students, and women expressed more negative psychological experiences in their programs. We outline suggestions for graduate programs to support their graduate students, which include facilitating social connection, providing encouragement, a...
Abstract Although individual differences in dispositional gratitude have been shown to relate wit... more Abstract Although individual differences in dispositional gratitude have been shown to relate with both personal well-being and intergenerational beneficence, no work has yet examined whether trait gratitude is correlated with consideration of future consequences for one's self. Across six studies (total N = 2758) we find robust evidence for a significant and positive correlation between dispositional gratitude and consideration of future consequences (CFC): r = 0.33, SE = 0.02, Z = 16.82, p
Harm-centric accounts of judgments of moral wrongdoing argue that moral judgments are fundamental... more Harm-centric accounts of judgments of moral wrongdoing argue that moral judgments are fundamentally based on appraisals of harm. However, past research has failed to operationally discriminate harm appraisals from appraisals related to injustice. Four studies carefully discriminated harm qua pain/suffering from injustice, alongside appraisals related to impurity, authority, and disloyalty. Appraisals of injustice outperformed appraisals of harm as independent predictors of the judged wrongness of recalled offenses (Study 1). Studies 2a, 2b, and 3 extended these findings using a diverse range of wrongful acts and two different cultural samples—the United States and Greece. In addition to the strong relevance of injustice appraisals, these latter studies uncovered substantial contributions of impurity and authority appraisals. The results inform debates on moral pluralism and the foundations of moral cognition.
Building on independent versus interdependent self-construal theory, three studies provide initia... more Building on independent versus interdependent self-construal theory, three studies provide initial empirical evidence for a third way of construing the self: the constructivist self-construal. People with a constructivist view perceive the self as constantly changing (impermanence), as a collection of distinct phenomena from moment to moment (discontinuity), as lacking an essence (disentification), and as psychologically overlapping with other people and things in the universe (boundlessness/boundaries). In Study 1, we piloted a new Constructivist Self-Construal Scale and established preliminary evidence for the discriminant validity of the scale. Studies 2 and 3 found that across seven countries with diverse cultural backgrounds, the self was consistently cognitively represented on the four dimensions of constructivist self. People from collectivistic cultures where Buddhist philosophy is more prevalent tended to endorse the dimensions of the constructivist self-construal to a grea...
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