Commentary on Over (2021): Well-taken Points About Dehumanization, But Exaggerated Challenges

We offer a critical appraisal of Over's (2020) seven challenges for dehumanization research in social psychology. While the challenges mainly attack an exaggerated version of the claims that dehumanization research actually makes, the positive suggestions that follow them open up some much-needed questions. By seeing humanity as a prototype-based category, we can address more sensitively how various departures from prototypical humanity relate to each other. We can also ask whether all of these departures are equally necessary or sufficient explanations for the effects of dehumanizing treatment and metaphors in degrading moral consideration of other groups of people

Power increases anchoring effects on judgment

Four experiments test the impact of power (versus powerlessness) on anchoring effects. Anchoring refers to the tendency to assimilate one’s judgment to a previously considered numeric standard. Based on the notion that power facilitates the activation of and reliance on accessible information, we hypothesized that power increases numeric anchoring effects on judgment, compared to powerlessness. Across studies, we found consistent support for this idea, when testing estimations of factual values (Experiments 1 and 2), subjective evaluations (Experiment 3), and negotiation behavior (Experiment 4). The findings of Studies 2 to 4 qualify the dominant idea in power literature that power reduces conformity to others’ opinion. Power increases conformity to others’ opinion, if such opinion is presented as an anchor and therefore processed more automatically. These findings also have important methodological implications for power research. They show that differences in stimulus presentation can steer observed effects of power in opposite directions

Mind-body dualism and health revisited: How belief in dualism shapes health behavior

Does a sound mind require a sound body? Whether or not lay people subscribe to this notion depends on their belief in mind-body dualism and critically shapes their health-related behaviors. Six studies (N = 1,710) revisit the relation between dualism and health. We replicate the negative correlation between belief in dualism and health behavior (Study 1) and extend it to behavior in the field (Study 2). Studies 3a and 3b investigate how belief in dualism shapes intuitions about the material origin of psychological well-being, while Studies 4a and 4b examine how these intuitions determine health-related outcomes. In sum, construing minds as different from bodies entails the intuition that mental well-being has little material substrate which in turn attenuates health-sustaining behaviors

The mind of the market: Lay beliefs about the economy as a willful, goal-oriented agent

We propose an extension to Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) framework for folk-economic beliefs, suggesting that certain evolutionarily acquired cognitive inference systems can cause modern humans to perceive abstract systems such as the economy as willful, goal-oriented agents. Such an anthropomorphized view, we argue, can have meaningful effects on people's moral evaluations of these agents, as well as on their political and economic behavior

Bullseye! How power improves motor performance

Power makes people think, feel, and behave in ways that help them to maintain and increase power. Thus far, the mechanisms underlying power’s beneficial effects on goal pursuit have been investigated predominantly on a cognitive level. The present research tested whether power influences goal pursuit in an even more fundamental way, namely by improving actual behavior on motor-based tasks. Furthermore, we suggest that this effect is produced by changes in perceptual goal representation. Consistent with our assumptions, Experiment 1 found that individuals primed with high-power outperformed control participants on a golf-putting task. In Experiment 2, individuals receiving a high-power prime outperformed individuals receiving a low-power prime on a dart-throwing task. Moreover, high-power primed participants represented the focal goal (a dart board) in greater goal-relevant detail, which mediated the effect of power on motor performance. Taken together, these findings suggest that power shapes performance in more fundamental ways than previously assumed

A free will needs a free mind: Belief in substance dualism and reductive physicalism differentially predict belief in free will and determinism

In this article, we show that lay people's beliefs about how minds relate to bodies are more complex than past research suggests, and that treating them as a multidimensional construct helps explain inconclusive findings from the literature regarding their relation to beliefs about whether humans possess a free will. In two studies, we found that items previously used to assess a unidimensional belief in how minds relate to bodies indeed capture two distinguishable constructs (belief in substance dualism and reductive physicalism) that differently predict belief in free will and two types of determinism (Studies 1 and 2). Additionally, we found that two fundamental personality traits pertaining to people’s preference for experiential versus rational information processing predict those metaphysical beliefs that were theorized to be based on subjective phenomenological experience and rational deliberation, respectively (Study 2). In sum, beliefs about mind-body relations are a multidimensional construct with unique predictive abilities

The Cartesian Folk Theater: People conceptualize consciousness as a spatio-temporally localized process in the human brain.

The present research (total N = 2,057) tested whether people’s folk conception of consciousness aligns with the notion of a “Cartesian Theater” (Dennett, 1991). More precisely, we tested the hypotheses that people believe that consciousness happens in a single, confined area (vs. multiple dispersed areas) in the human brain, and that it (partly) happens after the brain finished analyzing all available information. Further, we investigated how these beliefs are related to participants’ neuroscientific knowledge as well as their reliance on intuition, and which rationale they use to explain their responses. Using a computer-administered drawing task, we found that participants located consciousness, but not unrelated neurological processes (Studies 1a & 1b) or unconscious thinking (Study 2) in a single, confined area in the prefrontal cortex, and that they considered most of the brain not involved in consciousness. Participants mostly relied on their intuitions when responding, and they were not affected by prior knowledge about the brain. Additionally, they considered the conscious experience of sensory stimuli to happen in a spatially more confined area than the corresponding computational analysis of these stimuli (Study 3). Furthermore, participants’ explicit beliefs about spatial and temporal localization of consciousness (i.e., consciousness happening after the computational analysis of sensory information is completed) are independent, yet positively correlated beliefs (Study 4). Using a more elaborate measure for temporal localization of conscious experience, our final study confirmed that people believe consciousness to partly happen even after information processing is done (Study 5)

Abstract thinking increases support for affirmative action

Affirmative action is the proactive process of using resources to ensure that people are not discriminated against based on their group membership, such as gender or ethnicity. It is an effective way to reduce discrimination, but attitudes toward affirmative action are often negative, especially in groups implementing affirmative action. Previous research identified different influences on attitudes toward affirmative action, but mainly unchangeable ones. We focus on the influence of abstract thinking on support for affirmative action because abstract thinking is a changeable characteristic that can direct attention to the purpose of affirmative action policies. Across five studies with U.S. MTurk workers—focusing on women as the target group, but including other target groups as well—we show that thinking abstractly improves attitudes toward affirmative action. We observe this effect using correlational (Study 1, n = 251) and experimental (Studies 2–5, ns = 201–515) designs. Additionally, we test whether perceived discrimination increases the impact of abstract thinking on attitudes toward affirmation action (Studies 2–5). We report a meta-analysis across our studies. Overall, thinking abstractly about affirmative action clearly leads to more favorable attitudes toward it, and this effect is somewhat stronger when discrimination is perceived to be high. Consequently, companies and policymakers that would like to increase support for affirmative action policies could use abstract thinking to do so, for example by encouraging employees to think about and discuss why (vs. how) affirmative action policies are implemented

Nothing compares to me: How narcissism shapes comparative thinking

Feeling special feels good. This may be particularly true for individuals with narcissistic tendencies who put great emphasis on distinctiveness and uniqueness in relation to others. But how do people arrive at the conclusion that they are special? Psychological research has identified social comparisons as a powerful means to inform such judgments about the self. The present research investigates whether narcissism may be related to a particular strategy of comparative thinking. Specifically, we expected that narcissistic individuals—presumably to meet an elevated need for uniqueness—would predominantly focus on differences (as opposed to similarities) when engaging in comparisons. To test this prediction, four studies investigated how narcissism shapes comparative thinking in social and nonsocial judgment domains. The first two studies revealed that narcissistic personality tendencies were positively related to an informational focus on differences during habitual comparisons in both social and nonsocial contexts (Studies 1a and 1b). Two additional studies extended this relation between narcissism and difference focus to the domain of spontaneous social and nonsocial comparisons (Studies 2a and 2b). Such a content-free processing style during comparative thinking may assist narcissists to increase their feelings of distinctiveness, and may ultimately contribute to the rise and maintenance of narcissistic tendencies

The Cartesian Folk Theater: People conceptualize consciousness as a spatio-temporally localized process in the human brain

The present research (total N = 2,057) tested whether people’s folk conception of consciousness aligns with the notion of a “Cartesian Theater” (Dennett, 1991). More precisely, we tested the hypotheses that people believe that consciousness happens in a single, confined area (vs. multiple dispersed areas) in the human brain, and that it (partly) happens after the brain finished analyzing all available information. Further, we investigated how these beliefs arerelated to participants’ neuroscientific knowledge as well as their reliance on intuition, and which rationale they use to explain their responses. Using a computer-administered drawing task, we found that participants located consciousness, but not unrelated neurological processes (Studies 1a & 1b) or unconscious thinking (Study 2) in a single, confined area in the prefrontal cortex, and that they considered most of the brain not involved in consciousness. Participants mostly relied on their intuitions when responding, and they were not affected by prior knowledge about the brain. Additionally, they considered the conscious experience of sensory stimuli to happen in a spatially more confined area than the corresponding computational analysis of these stimuli (Study 3). Furthermore, participants’ explicit beliefs about spatial and temporal localization of consciousness (i.e., consciousness happening after the computational analysis of sensory information is completed) are independent, yet positively correlated beliefs (Study 4). Using a more elaborate measure for temporal localization of conscious experience, our final study confirmed that people believe consciousness to partly happen even after information processing is done (Study 5)