Learning about successfully implemented sustainability policies abroad increases support for sustainable domestic policies.

Anthropogenic climate change poses an existential threat to life on Earth, hastening the need to generate support for sustainability policies. Four preregistered studies (total N = 2524) tested whether informing United States citizens about the successful implementation of sustainability policies abroad increased support for similar domestic policies. Studies 1 and 2 found that learning about the successful implementation of sustainability policies (reducing automobile use, using wind energy) abroad increased (1) support for similar domestic policies, (2) intentions to modify behavior to facilitate the adoption of sustainability policies, and (3) behavioral support for sustainability policies.

Exposure to automation explains religious declines.

The global decline of religiosity represents one of the most significant societal shifts in recent history. After millennia of near-universal religious identification, the world is experiencing a regionally uneven trend toward secularization. We propose an explanation of this decline, which claims that automation-the development of robots and artificial intelligence (AI)-can partly explain modern religious declines.

Algorithmic discrimination causes less moral outrage than human discrimination.

Companies and governments are using algorithms to improve decision-making for hiring, medical treatments, and parole. The use of algorithms holds promise for overcoming human biases in decision-making, but they frequently make decisions that discriminate. Media coverage suggests that people are morally outraged by algorithmic discrimination, but here we examine whether people are outraged by algorithmic discrimination than by human discrimination.

Concerns About Automation and Negative Sentiment Toward Immigration.

Across 12 studies ( = 31,581), we examined how concerns about the rise of automation may be associated with attitudes toward immigrants. Studies 1a to 1g used archival data ranging from 1986 to 2017 across both the United States and Europe to demonstrate a robust association between concerns about automation and more negative attitudes toward immigrants. Studies 2a, 2b, 2c, and 3 employed both correlational and experimental methods to demonstrate that people's concerns about automation are linked to increased support for restrictive immigration policies.

Aversion to playing God and moral condemnation of technology and science.

This research provides, to our knowledge, the first systematic empirical investigation of people's aversion to playing God. Seven studies validate this construct and show its association with negative moral judgements of science and technology. Motivated by three nationally representative archival datasets that demonstrate this relationship, studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that people condemn scientific procedures they perceive to involve playing God.

Nudging the better angels of our nature: A field experiment on morality and well-being.

A field experiment examines how moral behavior, moral thoughts, and self-benefiting behavior affect daily well-being. Using experience sampling technology, we randomly grouped participants over 10 days to either behave morally, have moral thoughts, or do something positive for themselves. Participants received treatment-specific instructions in the morning of 5 days and no instructions on the other 5 control days.

Anthropomorphizing without Social Cues Requires the Basolateral Amygdala.

Anthropomorphism, the attribution of distinctively human mental characteristics to nonhuman animals and objects, illustrates the human propensity for extending social cognition beyond typical social targets. Yet, its processing components remain challenging to study because they are typically all engaged simultaneously. Across one pilot study and one focal study, we tested three rare people with basolateral amygdala lesions to dissociate two specific processing components: those triggered by attention to social cues (e.

The Link Between Self-Dehumanization and Immoral Behavior.

People perceive morality to be distinctively human, with immorality representing a lack of full humanness. In eight experiments, we examined the link between immorality and self-dehumanization, testing both (a) the causal role of immoral behavior on self-dehumanization and (b) the causal role of self-dehumanization on immoral behavior. Studies 1a to 1d showed that people feel less human after behaving immorally and that these effects were not driven by having a negative experience but were unique to experiences of immorality (Study 1d).

Does Online Technology Make Us More or Less Sociable? A Preliminary Review and Call for Research.

How does online technology affect sociability? Emerging evidence-much of it inconclusive-suggests a nuanced relationship between use of online technology (the Internet, social media, and virtual reality) and sociability (emotion recognition, empathy, perspective taking, and emotional intelligence). Although online technology can facilitate purely positive behavior (e.g.

My mind, your mind, and God's mind: How children and adults conceive of different agents' moral beliefs.

Extending prior research on belief attributions, we investigated the extent to which 5- to 8-year-olds and adults distinguish their beliefs and other humans' beliefs from God's beliefs. In Study 1, children reported that all agents held the same beliefs, whereas adults drew greater distinctions among agents. For example, adults reported that God was less likely than humans to view behaviors as morally acceptable.

Dying Is Unexpectedly Positive.

In people's imagination, dying seems dreadful; however, these perceptions may not reflect reality. In two studies, we compared the affective experience of people facing imminent death with that of people imagining imminent death. Study 1 revealed that blog posts of near-death patients with cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis were more positive and less negative than the simulated blog posts of nonpatients-and also that the patients' blog posts became more positive as death neared.

Endorsing help for others that you oppose for yourself: Mind perception alters the perceived effectiveness of paternalism.

How people choose to help each other can be just as important as how much people help. Help can come through relatively paternalistic or agentic aid. Paternalistic aid, such as banning certain foods to encourage weight loss or donating food to alleviate poverty, restricts recipients' choices compared with agentic aid, such as providing calorie counts or donating cash.

Centripetal and centrifugal forces in the moral circle: Competing constraints on moral learning.

The idea of the moral circle pictures the self in the center, surrounded by concentric circles encompassing increasingly distant possible targets of moral concern, including family, local community, nation, all humans, all mammals, all living things including plants, and all things including inanimate objects. The authors develop the idea of two opposing forces in people's moral circles, with centripetal forces pulling inward, urging greater concern for close others than for distant others, and centrifugal forces pushing outward, resisting "drawing the line" anywhere as a form of prejudice and urging egalitarian concern for all regardless of social distance. Review of the developmental literature shows very early emergence of both moral forces, suggesting at least partly intuitive bases for each.

Distinct neural patterns of social cognition for cooperation versus competition.

How do people consider other minds during cooperation versus competition? Some accounts predict that theory of mind (ToM) is recruited more for cooperation versus competition or competition versus cooperation, whereas other accounts predict similar recruitment across these two contexts. The present fMRI study examined activity in brain regions for ToM (bilateral temporoparietal junction, precuneus, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex) across cooperative and competitive interactions with the same individual within the same paradigm. Although univariate analyses revealed that ToM regions overall were recruited similarly across interaction contexts, multivariate pattern analyses revealed that these regions nevertheless encoded information separating cooperation from competition.

The ascent of man: Theoretical and empirical evidence for blatant dehumanization.

Dehumanization is a central concept in the study of intergroup relations. Yet although theoretical and methodological advances in subtle, "everyday" dehumanization have progressed rapidly, blatant dehumanization remains understudied. The present research attempts to refocus theoretical and empirical attention on blatant dehumanization, examining when and why it provides explanatory power beyond subtle dehumanization.

How Children and Adults Represent God's Mind.

For centuries, humans have contemplated the minds of gods. Research on religious cognition is spread across sub-disciplines, making it difficult to gain a complete understanding of how people reason about gods' minds. We integrate approaches from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology and neuroscience to illuminate the origins of religious cognition.