Are many sex/gender differences really power differences?

This research addresses the long-standing debate about the determinants of sex/gender differences. Evolutionary theorists trace many sex/gender differences back to natural selection and sex-specific adaptations. Sociocultural and biosocial theorists, in contrast, emphasize how societal roles and social power contribute to sex/gender differences beyond any biological distinctions. By connecting two empirical advances over the past two decades-6-fold increases in sex/gender difference meta-analyses and in experiments conducted on the psychological effects of power-the current research offers a novel empirical examination of whether power differences play an explanatory role in sex/gender differences. Our analyses assessed whether experimental manipulations of power and sex/gender differences produce similar psychological and behavioral effects. We first identified 59 findings from published experiments on power. We then conducted a P-curve of the experimental power literature and established that it contained evidential value. We next subsumed these effects of power into 11 broad categories and compared them to 102 similar meta-analytic sex/gender differences. We found that high-power individuals and men generally display higher agency, lower communion, more positive self-evaluations, and similar cognitive processes. Overall, 71% (72/102) of the sex/gender differences were consistent with the effects of experimental power differences, whereas only 8% (8/102) were opposite, representing a 9:1 ratio of consistent-to-inconsistent effects. We also tested for discriminant validity by analyzing whether power corresponds more strongly to sex/gender differences than extraversion: although extraversion correlates with power, it has different relationships with sex/gender differences. These results offer novel evidence that many sex/gender differences may be explained, in part, by power differences.

The bright side of secrecy: The energizing effect of positive secrets.

Existing wisdom holds that secrecy is burdensome and fatiguing. However, past research has conflated secrecy with the kinds of adverse events that are often kept secret. As a result, it is unclear whether secrecy is inherently depleting, or whether these consequences vary based on the underlying meaning of the secret. We resolve this confound by examining the consequences of positive secrets. In contrast to the prior research, five experiments (N = 2,800) find that positive secrets increase feelings of energy, relative to (a) content-matched positive non-secrets, (b) other pieces of unknown positive information, and (c) other kinds of secrets. Importantly, these energizing effects of positive secrets were independent of positive affect. We further found that positive secrets are energizing because, compared to other kinds of secrets, people keep them for more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated reasons. That is, these secrets are more freely chosen, more consistent with personal values, and more motivated by internal desires (than by external pressures). Using both measures and manipulations of these motivations, we found that a motivational mechanism helps explain the energizing effect of positive secrets. The present results offer new insights into secrecy, how people respond to positive life events, and the subjective experiences of vitality and energy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

SHARP wit: Why receiving sarcasm improves perspective-taking.

Despite its use of opposing expressions, sarcasm is often used to communicate a speaker's viewpoint. The current analysis explores whether and when sarcasm increases the recipients' understanding. We propose a theoretical model-the SHARP model-that specifies how sarcasm often helps activate perspective-taking. Our model proposes that sarcasm can provide the cognitive readiness and the motivational drive that enable recipients to see the world from the speaker's viewpoint. Building off findings in psychology and sociology, we hypothesize that sarcasm activates two precursors to perspective-taking: deliberate processing and open-mindedness. We also discuss three moderators that can reduce sarcasm's positive effects and even turn them negative. We call on future research to empirically test the SHARP model.

Self-affirmation increases reemployment success for the unemployed.

Losing a job is one of life's most stressful events. Furthermore, maladaptive reactions to unemployment can trap people in a vicious cycle that derails their reemployment efforts. The current research tested whether a brief values-based self-affirmation intervention increases the odds of reemployment after a job loss and during unemployment, which presumably breaks this vicious cycle. Two field experiments, including one with a governmental employment agency, found that a 15-min self-affirmation exercise-i.e., reflecting on one's most important values-increased key employment-related outcomes after 4 wk, including the probability and speed of reemployment and the number of job offers. Because the ordeal of job loss and the probability of reemployment may be particularly challenging for individuals above the age of 50 y, we also explored whether the intervention was equally effective for those above and below 50 y of age. Demonstrating the generality of this effect, the efficacy of the intervention did not differ between individuals below and above the age of 50, and it was also effective for both recently unemployed and chronically unemployed individuals. Because self-affirmations have more typically been tested in educational contexts, the current research demonstrates the wide-ranging value of this intervention. By diminishing the vicious cycle of unemployment, the present studies show how a simple self-affirmation intervention can help individuals succeed in the labor market.

Evaluating the Evidence for Enclothed Cognition: Z-Curve and Meta-Analyses.

Enclothed cognition refers to the systematic influence that clothes can have on the wearer's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through their symbolic meaning. It has attracted considerable academic and nonacademic interest, with the 2012 article that coined the phrase cited more than 600 times and covered in more than 160 news outlets. However, a recent high-powered replication failed to replicate one of the original effects. To determine whether the larger body of research on enclothed cognition possesses evidential value and replicable effects, we performed z-curve and meta-analyses using 105 effects from 40 studies across 24 articles (N = 3,789). Underscoring the marked improvement of psychological research practices in the mid-2010s, our results raise concerns about the replicability of early enclothed cognition studies but affirm the evidential value for effects published after 2015. These later studies support the core principle of enclothed cognition-what we wear influences how we think, feel, and act.

Why People Hate Congress but Love Their Own Congressperson: An Information Processing Explanation.

Citizens in Western democracies often have negative attitudes toward political bodies, yet consistently re-elect their own representatives to these same political bodies. They hate Congress, but love their own congressperson. In contrast to resource-based explanations, we propose that this Paradox of Congressional Support is partly due to the wide availability of negative information about politicians in open societies combined with basic processes of information processing. Five studies found that unrelated negative political information decreases attitudes toward political categories such as U.S. governors but has no effect on attitudes of familiar, individual politicians (e.g., one's own governor); additional studies further identify familiarity as the critical process. Importantly, we demonstrate that this effect generalizes to all U.S. regions and remains when controlling for and is not moderated by political ideology. These results place a presumed macrolevel political paradox within the domain of cognitive mechanisms of basic information processing.

More threatening and more diagnostic: How moral comparisons differ from social comparisons.

The current research tests how comparisons in the moral domain differ from other social comparisons in three ways. First, an initial experience-sampling study shows that people compare downward more strongly in the moral domain than in most other domains (Study 1, N = 454), because people like to feel moral and present themselves as moral. Second, the classic threat principle of social comparison holds that people choose downward comparisons to improve their well-being after a threat to their self-esteem. We propose that in the moral domain the threat principle is intensified because morality is a uniquely important and central comparison domain. Across seven experiments (Experiments 2a and 2b, 3a-3c, 4a and 4b), we find that people search for downward comparisons much more than in other domains. This effect is so strong that people are willing to forgo money and incur time costs to avoid upward moral comparisons when threatened. Third, another classic principle of social comparison holds that people only consider comparisons that are diagnostic (i.e., close or similar) and therefore self-relevant, while dismissing extreme or dissimilar comparisons as irrelevant. We propose that this diagnosticity principle is attenuated because morality is a binding code that applies equally to all humans. Across four experiments (Experiments 5a and 5b, 6a and 6b), we find that even the most extreme and dissimilar moral (but not other) comparisons are deemed relevant and potentially threatening. Together, these twelve studies (total N = 5,543) demonstrate how moral comparisons are a ubiquitous but fundamentally distinct form of social comparison with altered basic principles. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

How personality and policy predict pandemic behavior: Understanding sheltering-in-place in 55 countries at the onset of COVID-19.

The spread of COVID-19 within any given country or community at the onset of the pandemic depended in part on the sheltering-in-place rate of its citizens. The pandemic led us to revisit one of psychology's most fundamental and most basic questions in a high-stakes context: what determines human behavior? Adopting a Lewinian interactionist lens, we investigate the independent and joint effects of macrolevel government policies and microlevel psychological factors-that is, personality-on whether individuals sheltered-in-place. We analyzed data collected in late March and early April 2020 from 101,005 participants in 55 countries, a time period that coincided with the early and accelerating stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This time period also contained substantial variation in the stringency of governmental policy toward sheltering-in-place, both between countries and within each country over time. Analyses revealed that personality and the stringency of governmental policies independently predicted sheltering-in-place rates. Policy stringency was positively related to sheltering-in-place. For the personality dimensions, Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism all predicted higher rates of sheltering-in-place, whereas Extraversion was negatively related to staying at home. In addition, two personality traits-Openness to Experience and Neuroticism-interacted with governmental policy to predict whether individuals sheltered-in-place; openness and neuroticism each had weaker effects on sheltering-in-place as governmental policies became stricter. Theoretically, the findings demonstrate that individual differences predict behavior (i.e., sheltering-in-place) even when governments take strong action targeting that behavior. Practically, they suggest that even if governments lift their shelter-in-place restrictions, some individuals will shelter-in-place less than others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

How Does Collectivism Affect Social Interactions? A Test of Two Competing Accounts.

How does the cultural construct of collectivism impact social interactions? Two accounts of collectivism offer diverging predictions. The collectivism-as-values account proposes that people in collectivistic cultures prioritize their ingroup relationships; accordingly, this account predicts that collectivistic cultures will have more harmonious ingroup interactions than individualistic cultures. The socioecological account holds that individualistic cultures have high relational mobility, which requires people to invest in their ingroup relationships, whereas collectivistic cultures feature more fixed relationships that do not require positive engagement. To test these competing hypotheses about ingroup relationships across cultures, we sampled the daily interactions of college students in China and the United States. Results revealed that the individualistic culture (United States) had more positive ingroup interactions, more gratitude, and more emotional support than the collectivistic culture (China). The current findings are consistent with the socioecological account of collectivism and the effects of relational mobility on social relationships.

The power shield: Powerful roles eliminate gender disparities in political elections.

Are women less likely to win elections than men? Past analyses of U.S. elections have found little evidence of gender bias, leading some scholars to declare: "When women run, women win." However, across many professional domains, women face disparate outcomes in achieving leadership positions. The current research resolves this puzzle through a novel theoretical perspective and methodological advances. Theoretically, we propose that power frees women from restrictive gender norms, reducing gender bias. Thus, gender bias likely exists in politics but is more pronounced for lower-power candidates and less pronounced for higher-power candidates. Because incumbent candidates have more power and challenger candidates less power, we predicted incumbent women would be shielded from gender bias and achieve electoral parity with incumbent men. Conversely, we predicted challenger women would face particularly strong gender bias and disparate outcomes. Methodologically, we resolve prior scope-of-analysis limitations by analyzing every governor and U.S. senator election since women's suffrage (1920). Further, we developed a novel bootstrapping method that resolves regression assumption violations inherent in statistical analyses of candidate-level measures. Analyses revealed 2 important findings. First, our comprehensive dataset revealed that, contrary to past research, women were less likely to win elections than men overall. Second, we found evidence for a power shield effect: Male challengers were three times more likely to win than female challengers, men were 25% more likely than women to win open-seat races, but female incumbents fared just as well as male incumbents. These results suggest that some gender differences may be power differences in disguise. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Power leads to action because it releases the psychological brakes on action.

Why does power lead to action? Theories of power suggest it leads to action because it presses the psychological gas pedal. A review of two decades of research finds, instead, that power releases the psychological brakes on action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by making failure seem less probable and feel less painful, thereby decreasing the downside risks of action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by shrouding the feelings and thoughts of others, thereby diminishing the perceived social costs of action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by limiting goal-inhibiting distractions, thereby promoting greater goal focus and focusing the mind on action. By removing these psychological barriers to action, power leads to action.

Open to offers, but resisting requests: How the framing of anchors affects motivation and negotiated outcomes.

Abundant research has established that first proposals can anchor negotiations and lead to a first-mover advantage. The current research developed and tested a motivated anchor adjustment hypothesis that integrates the literatures on framing and anchoring and highlights how anchoring in negotiations differs in significant ways from standard decision-making contexts. Our research begins with the premise that first proposals can be framed as either an offer of resources (e.g., I am offering my A for your B) that highlights gains versus a request for resources (e.g., I am requesting your B for my A) that highlights losses to a responder. We propose that this framing would affect the concession aversion of responders and ultimately the negotiated outcomes. We predicted that when a first proposal is framed as an offer, the well-documented anchoring and first-mover advantage effect would emerge because offers do not create high levels of concession aversion. In contrast, because requests highlight what the responder has to give up, we predicted that opening requests would produce concession aversion and eliminate and even reverse the first-mover advantage. Across 5 experiments, the classic first-mover advantage in negotiations was moderated by the framing of proposals because anchor framing affected concession aversion. The studies highlight how motivational forces (i.e., concession aversion) play an important role in producing anchoring effects, which has been predominantly viewed through a purely cognitive lens. Overall, the findings highlight when and how motivational processes play a key role in both judgmental heuristics and mixed-motive decision-making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The Solitude of Secrecy: Thinking About Secrets Evokes Goal Conflict and Feelings of Fatigue.

Past research has conceptualized secrecy as speech inhibition during social interaction. In contrast, the current research broadens the understanding of secrecy by conceptualizing it as the commitment to conceal information. Seven experiments demonstrate the implications of this broader conceptualization for understanding secrecy's consequences. The results demonstrate that thinking about secrets-relative to thinking about personal information unknown by others that is not purposefully concealed (i.e., undisclosed information)-indirectly increases the experience of fatigue by evoking feelings of isolation and a motivational conflict with one's affiliation goals. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the fatiguing effects of secrecy have consequences for task persistence and performance. Integrating theories of motivation, fatigue, and social isolation, we offer new directions for research on secrecy.

Why grit requires perseverance and passion to positively predict performance.

Prior studies linking grit-defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals-to performance are beset by contradictory evidence. As a result, commentators have increasingly declared that grit has limited effects. We propose that this inconsistent evidence has occurred because prior research has emphasized perseverance and ignored, both theoretically and empirically, the critical role of passion, which we define as a strong feeling toward a personally important value/preference that motivates intentions and behaviors to express that value/preference. We suggest that combining the grit scale-which only captures perseverance-with a measure that assesses whether individuals attain desired levels of passion will predict performance. We first metaanalyzed 127 studies (n = 45,485) that used the grit scale and assessed performance, and found that effect sizes are larger in studies where participants were more passionate for the performance domain. Second, in a survey of employees matched to supervisor-rated job performance (n = 422), we found that the combination of perseverance, measured through the grit scale, and passion attainment, measured through a new scale, predicted higher performance. A final study measured perseverance and passion attainment in a sample of students (n = 248) and linked these to their grade-point average (GPA), finding that the combination of perseverance and passion attainment predicted higher GPAs in part through increased immersion. The present results help resolve the mixed evidence of grit's relationship with performance by highlighting the important role that passion plays in predicting performance. By adequately measuring both perseverance and passion, the present research uncovers grit's true predictive power.

The Long Shadow of Rivalry: Rivalry Motivates Performance Today and Tomorrow.

Research has established that competing head to head against a rival boosts motivation and performance. The present research investigated whether rivalry can affect performance over time and in contests without rivals. We examined the long-term effects of rivalry through archival analyses of postseason performance in multiple high-stakes sports contexts: National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Men's Basketball and the major U.S. professional sports leagues: National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), and National Hockey League (NHL). Econometric analyses revealed that postseason performance of a focal team's rival in year N predicted that focal team's postseason performance in year N + 1. Follow-up analyses suggested that the performance boost was especially pronounced when one's rival won the previous tournament. These results establish that rivalry has a long shadow: A rival team's success exerts such a powerful motivational force that it drives performance outside of direct competition with one's rival and even after a significant delay.

Polluted Morality: Air Pollution Predicts Criminal Activity and Unethical Behavior.

Air pollution is a serious problem that affects billions of people globally. Although the environmental and health costs of air pollution are well known, the present research investigates its ethical costs. We propose that air pollution can increase criminal and unethical behavior by increasing anxiety. Analyses of a 9-year panel of 9,360 U.S. cities found that air pollution predicted six major categories of crime; these analyses accounted for a comprehensive set of control variables (e.g., city and year fixed effects, population, law enforcement) and survived various robustness checks (e.g., balanced panel, nonparametric bootstrapped standard errors). Three subsequent experiments involving American and Indian participants established the causal effect of psychologically experiencing a polluted (vs. clean) environment on unethical behavior. Consistent with our theoretical perspective, results revealed that anxiety mediated this effect. Air pollution not only corrupts people's health, but also can contaminate their morality.

The critical role of second-order normative beliefs in predicting energy conservation.

Sustaining large-scale public goods requires individuals to make environmentally friendly decisions today to benefit future generations1-6. Recent research suggests that second-order normative beliefs are more powerful predictors of behaviour than first-order personal beliefs7,8. We explored the role that second-order normative beliefs-the belief that community members think that saving energy helps the environment-play in curbing energy use. We first analysed a data set of 211 independent, randomized controlled trials conducted in 27 US states by Opower, a company that uses comparative information about energy consumption to reduce household energy usage (pooled N = 16,198,595). Building off the finding that the energy savings varied between 0.81% and 2.55% across states, we matched this energy use data with a survey that we conducted of over 2,000 individuals in those same states on their first-order personal and second-order normative beliefs. We found that second-order normative beliefs predicted energy savings but first-order personal beliefs did not. A subsequent pre-registered experiment provides causal evidence for the role of second-order normative beliefs in predicting energy conservation above first-order personal beliefs. Our results suggest that second-order normative beliefs play a critical role in promoting energy conservation and have important implications for policymakers concerned with curbing the detrimental consequences of climate change.