Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: People Anticipate More Regret from Missed Romantic Opportunities than from Rejection

Romantic pursuit decisions often require a person to risk one of two errors: pursuing a romantic target when interest is not reciprocated (resulting in rejection), or failing to pursue a romantic target when interest is reciprocated (resulting in a missed romantic opportunity). In the present research, we examined how strongly people wish to avoid these two competing negative outcomes. When asked to recall a regrettable dating experience, participants were more than three times as likely to recall a missed opportunity rather than a rejection (Study 1). When presented with romantic pursuit dilemmas, participants perceived missed opportunities to be more regrettable than rejection (Studies 2-4), partially because they perceived missed opportunities to be more consequential to their lives (Studies 3 and 4). Participants were also more willing to risk rejection rather than missed romantic opportunities in the context of imagined (Study 4) and actual (Study 5) pursuit decisions. These effects generally extended even to less secure individuals (low self-esteem, high attachment anxiety). Overall, these studies suggest that motivation to avoid missed romantic opportunities may help to explain how people overcome fears of rejection in the pursuit of potential romantic partners

Beyond Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness: The Big Five personality aspect/facet predictors of American political orientation

This research examines the aspect/facet-level personality trait predictors of political orientation in US samples

Folk beliefs about genetic variation predict avoidance of biracial individuals

People give widely varying estimates for the amount of genetic overlap that exists between humans. While some laypeople believe that humans are highly genetically similar to one another, others believe that humans share very little genetic overlap. These studies examine how beliefs about genetic overlap affect neural and evaluative reactions to racially-ambiguous and biracial targets. In Study 1, we found that lower genetic overlap estimates predicted a stronger neural avoidance response to biracial compared to monoracial targets. In Study 2, we found that lower genetic overlap estimates predicted longer response times to classify biracial (versus monoracial) faces into racial categories. In Study 3, we manipulated genetic overlap beliefs and found that participants in the low overlap condition explicitly rated biracial targets more negatively than those in the high overlap condition. Taken together, these data suggest that genetic overlap beliefs influence perceivers’ processing fluency and evaluation of biracial and racially-ambiguous individuals

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the effects of negative age stereotypes and perceived age discrimination on older adults’ well-being

Objectives: Although numerous studies have documented that negative age stereotypes and perceived age discrimination are related to older adults’ lower well-being, few studies have investigated the mechanisms underlying these relationships. In this study, we tested whether self-perceptions of aging and subjective age would help to account for the relation between stereotypes and discrimination and self-esteem. According to the internalization hypothesis, we expected that the effects of negative age stereotypes and greater perceived age discrimination would be driven by more negative self-perceptions of aging and older subjective age. Method: A total of 151 older adults completed questions assessing their endorsement of negative age stereotypes, perceived age discrimination, self-perceptions of aging, subjective age, and self-esteem. Relationships among these variables were assessed using serial mediation analyses. Results: Consistent with the internalization hypothesis, negative age stereotypes and perceived age discrimination indirectly predicted older subjective age and lower self-esteem through worsening self-perceptions of aging. However, we did not find a direct effect of negative age stereotypes or perceived discrimination on subjective age, nor an indirect effect of negative age stereotypes and perceived age discrimination on self-esteem through subjective age. Conclusion: These results support the internalization hypothesis: among older adults, holding more negative age stereotypes and perceiving more age discrimination is associated with feeling older and with lower self-esteem through worsened perceptions of one’s own aging. Given the central role of self-perceptions of aging, these findings highlight the importance of promoting more positive self-perceptions in order to maintain or increase older adults’ well-being

Psychological Predictors and Consequences of Hearing Health Behaviors in Older Adults

Introduction: Hearing loss is a common chronic condition affecting older adults in Western populations [1, 2]. Even if older adults could benefit from hearing aid use, they are reluctant to wear them [1]. The purpose of the present study was twofold: a) to examine whether older adults’ implicit theories regarding the modifiability of abilities in general would predict their hearing health behaviors; and (b) to assess consequences of these behaviors on subjective aging. Methods: One hundred and sixty-three older adults (Mean age = 68.62, SD = 5.40) completed, among other questionnaires, questions assessing their implicit theories of ability (i.e., seeing general abilities as fixed vs. improvable with effort [3]) and their subjective age (i.e., felt age, do age, look age, and interest age [4]). They also reported their perceptions of the benefits of various hearing health behaviors for slowing the effects of aging (i.e., getting their hearing tested and using hearing aids) as well as their intentions to engage in those behaviors. Results: We found that the more older people considered that abilities are alterable, the more they perceived hearing health behaviors as being beneficial, which in turn increased their intentions to engage in these behaviors. Also, the greater their intentions, the younger subjective age they reported. Key conclusions: These relationships between implicit theories, hearing health behaviors, and subjective age are particularly important to take into account. Indeed, neglecting hearing problems and experiencing an older subjective age may have detrimental health-related outcomes over time [5, 6]. 1. Feder, K., Michaud, D., Ramage-Morin, P., McNamee, J., & Beauregard, Y. (2015). Prevalence of hearing loss among Canadians aged 20 to 79: Audiometric results from the 2012/2013 Canadian Health Measures Survey. Health Reports, 26(7), 18-25. 2. Lin, F. R., Thorpe, R., Gordon-Salant, S., & Ferrucci, L. (2011). Hearing loss prevalence and risk factors among older adults in the United States. The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 66(5), 582-590. doi: doi:10.1093/gerona/glr002 3. Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development. Philadephia, PA: Psychology Press. 4. Kastenbaum, R., Derbin, V., Sabatini, P., & Artt, S. (1972). “The ages of me”: Toward personal and interpersonal definitions of functional aging. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 3(2), 197-211. 5. Bainbridge, K. E., & Wallhagen, M. I. (2014). Hearing loss in an aging American population: Extent, impact, and management. Annual Review of Public Health, 35, 139-152. doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182510 6. Kotter-Grühn, D., Kornadt, A. E., & Stephan, Y. (2015). Looking beyond chronological age: Current knowledge and future directions in the study of subjective age. Gerontology, 62(1), 86-93. doi: 10.1159/00043867