The effects of power on prosocial outcomes: a self-validation analysis

The present research distinguishes between primary (cognitive) and secondary (metacognitive) processes in the domain of power. Power is a central construct in economic decision making, influencing people’s thoughts and behavior in organizational, political, consumer, and interpersonal contexts. Whereas most research has discussed ways that power can influence primary cognition (e.g., increased self-focused thoughts, heuristic processing), we examine how power can influence secondary cognition (i.e., thinking about thinking). We argue that high (relative to low) power can increase reliance on one’s current thoughts, magnifying their influence on judgment. If thoughts are antisocial (prosocial), increased power will produce more antisocial (prosocial) judgments and behavior. We activated prosocial or antisocial concepts through priming before activating powerfulness or powerlessness. As predicted, primes impacted people’s self-perceptions of cooperation (Experiment 1) and the extent to which they were willing to help others (Experiment 2) when induced to feel powerful, but not when led to feel powerless.This research was supported in part by NSF Grants BCS-0847834 (to R.E.P.) and BCS-1145739 (to K.G.D.) and by Spanish grant PSI2011-26212 (to P.B.)

Attitudes in an interpersonal context: Psychological safety as a route to attitude change

Interpersonal contexts can be complex because they can involve two or more people who are interdependent, each of whom is pursuing both individual and shared goals. Interactions consist of individual and joint behaviors that evolve dynamically over time. Interactions are likely to affect people’s attitudes because the interpersonal context gives conversation partners a great deal of opportunity to intentionally or unintentionally influence each other. However, despite the importance of attitudes and attitude change in interpersonal interactions, this topic remains understudied. To shed light on the importance of this topic. We briefly review the features of interpersonal contexts and build a case that understanding people’s sense of psychological safety is key to understanding interpersonal influences on people’s attitudes. Specifically, feeling psychologically safe can make individuals more open-minded, increase reflective introspection, and decrease defensive processing. Psychological safety impacts how individuals think, make sense of their social world, and process attitude-relevant information. These processes can result in attitude change, even without any attempt at persuasion. We review the literature on interpersonal threats, receiving psychological safety, providing psychological safety, and interpersonal dynamics. We then detail the shortcomings of current approaches, highlight unanswered questions, and suggest avenues for future research that can contribute in developing this field

Wanting other attitudes: actual–desired attitude discrepancies predict feelings of ambivalence and ambivalence consequences

The experience of attitudinal ambivalence (subjective ambivalence) is important because it predicts key consequences of attitudes (e.g., attitude–behavior correspondence, attitude stability). However, the field's understanding of the antecedents of subjective ambivalence is still developing. We explore an unexamined antecedent of subjective ambivalence. Specifically, we examined discrepancies between participants' actual attitudes and their desired attitudes as antecedents of subjective ambivalence and ambivalence consequences. Six studies using a variety of attitude objects were conducted to test these ideas. The first four studies demonstrated that actual–desired attitude discrepancies predicted subjective ambivalence over its previously documented antecedents. Critically, two additional studies showed that actual–desired attitude discrepancies predicted important consequences of ambivalence. As actual–desired attitude discrepancies increased, participants' attitude–behavior correspondence decreased (Study 5), and desire to reduce attitudinal conflict increased (Study 6). Process data in these latter studies revealed indirect effects through subjective ambivalence that held after controlling for the objective presence of evaluative conflict

From primed construct to motivated behavior: validation processes in goal pursuit

When posting or re-using the article, you should provide a link/URL from the article posted to the SAGE Journals Online site where the article is published: http://online.sagepub.com and please make the following acknowledgment: "The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in , Vol/Issue, Month/Year by SAGE Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. © [The Author(s)]"Past research has found that primes can automatically initiate unconscious goal striving. Recent models of priming have suggested that this effect can be moderated by validation processes. According to a goal-validation perspective, primes should cause changes in one’s motivational state to the extent people have confidence in the prime-related mental content. Across three experiments, we provided the first direct empirical evidence for this goal-validation account. Using a variety of goal priming manipulations (cooperation vs. competition, achievement, and self-improvement vs. saving money) and validity inductions (power, ease, and writing about confidence), we demonstrated that the impact of goal primes on behavior occurs to a greater extent when conditions foster confidence (vs. doubt) in mental contents. Indeed, when conditions foster doubt, goal priming effects are eliminated or counter to the implications of the prime. The implications of these findings for research on goal priming and validation processes are discussed.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported in part by NSF Grant BCS-0847834 (to R.E.P.) and by Spanish grant PSI2011-26212 (to P.B.)

The effects of perceived COVID-19 threat on compensatory conviction, thought reliance, and attitudes

This research examines how people can defend themselves from the threat associated with the COVID-19 pandemic by relying more on their recently generated thoughts (unrelated to the threat), thus leading those thoughts to have a greater impact on judgement through a meta-cognitive process of thought validation. Study 1 revealed that the impact of the favourability of self-related thoughts on self-esteem was greater for those feeling relatively more (vs. less) threatened by COVID-19. Study 2 manipulated (rather than measured) the favourability of thoughts and assessed the perceived COVID-19 threat. Results also showed that the impact of thoughts on subsequent self-evaluations was greater for those feeling more threatened by COVID-19. Study 3 conceptually replicated the results using a full experimental design by manipulating both thought favourability andthe perceived COVID-19 threat, moving from the self to a social perception paradigm, and providing mediational evidence for the proposed mechanism of compensatory thought validation. A final study addressed some alternative explanations by testing whether the induction of threat used in Study 3 affected perceptions of threat while not having an impact on other featuresMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de España (ES), Grant/Award Number: PID2020-116651GB-C31;PID2020- 116651GBC33/AEI/10.13039/501100011033; Consejería de Ciencia, Universidades e Innovación, Comunidad de Madrid, Grant/Award Number: SI3/PJI/2021-0047

A creative destruction approach to replication: Implicit work and sex morality across cultures

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design in addition to the original ones, to help determine which theory best accounts for the results across multiple key outcomes and contexts. The present pre-registered empirical project compared the Implicit Puritanism account of intuitive work and sex morality to theories positing regional, religious, and social class differences; explicit rather than implicit cultural differences in values; self-expression vs. survival values as a key cultural fault line; the general moralization of work; and false positive effects. Contradicting Implicit Puritanism's core theoretical claim of a distinct American work morality, a number of targeted findings replicated across multiple comparison cultures, whereas several failed to replicate in all samples and were identified as likely false positives. No support emerged for theories predicting regional variability and specific individual-differences moderators (religious affiliation, religiosity, and education level). Overall, the results provide evidence that work is intuitively moralized across cultures