The Psychological Science Accelerator's COVID-19 rapid-response dataset.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments.

In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-No Concomitant Benefits: Experimental Evidence from 84 Countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g.

The Limitations of Social Science as the Arbiter of Blame: An Argument for Abandoning Retribution.

The U.S. criminal-justice system has consequentialist and retributivist goals: It considers what is best for society as well as how to punish people in a manner proportional to their crimes.

Psychologists update their beliefs about effect sizes after replication studies.

Self-correction-a key feature distinguishing science from pseudoscience-requires that scientists update their beliefs in light of new evidence. However, people are often reluctant to change their beliefs. We examined belief updating in action by tracking research psychologists' beliefs in psychological effects before and after the completion of four large-scale replication projects.

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation.

Scientific progress is like doing a puzzle, not building a wall.

We contest the "building a wall" analogy of scientific progress. We argue that this analogy unfairly privileges original research (which is perceived as laying bricks and, therefore, constructive) over replication research (which is perceived as testing and removing bricks and, therefore, destructive). We propose an alternative analogy for scientific progress: solving a jigsaw puzzle.

The political reference point: How geography shapes political identity.

It is commonly assumed that how individuals identify on the political spectrum-whether liberal, conservative, or moderate-has a universal meaning when it comes to policy stances and voting behavior. But, does political identity mean the same thing from place to place? Using data collected from across the U.S.

Testing the Link Between Empathy and Lay Theories of Happiness.

Happiness is a topic that ignites both considerable interest and considerable disagreement. Thus far, however, there has been little attempt to characterize people's lay theories about happiness or explore their consequences. We examined whether individual differences in lay theories of happiness would predict empathy.

Errors in Moral Forecasting: Perceptions of Affect Shape the Gap Between Moral Behaviors and Moral Forecasts.

Research in moral decision making has shown that there may not be a one-to-one relationship between peoples' moral forecasts and behaviors. Although past work suggests that physiological arousal may account for part of the behavior-forecasting discrepancy, whether or not perceptions of affect play an important determinant remains unclear. Here, we investigate whether this discrepancy may arise because people fail to anticipate how they will feel in morally significant situations.

Right-frontal cortical asymmetry predicts increased proneness to nostalgia.

Nostalgia is often triggered by feelings-such as sadness, loneliness, or meaninglessness-that are typically associated with withdrawal motivation. Here, we examined whether a trait tendency to experience withdrawal motivation is associated with nostalgia proneness. Past work indicates that baseline right-frontal cortical asymmetry is a neural correlate of withdrawal-related motivation.

Is dissonance reduction a special case of fluid compensation? Evidence that dissonant cognitions cause compensatory affirmation and abstraction.

Cognitive dissonance theory shares much in common with other perspectives that address anomalies, uncertainty, and general expectancy violations. This has led some theorists to argue that these theories represent overlapping psychological processes. If responding to dissonance and uncertainty occurs through a common psychological process, one should expect that the behavioral outcomes of feeling uncertain would also apply to feelings of dissonance, and vice versa.

RETRACTED: Fueling doubt and openness: experiencing the unconscious, constructed nature of perception induces uncertainty and openness to change.

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

Randomness increases self-reported anxiety and neurophysiological correlates of performance monitoring.

Several prominent theories spanning clinical, social and developmental psychology suggest that people are motivated to see the world as a sensible orderly place. These theories presuppose that randomness is aversive because it is associated with unpredictability. If this is the case, thinking that the world is random should lead to increased anxiety and heightened monitoring of one's actions and their consequences.

Right frontal cortical asymmetry predicts empathic reactions: support for a link between withdrawal motivation and empathy.

Depression, diminished positive affect, and exaggerated negative affect have all been linked to right frontal cortical asymmetry as measured by electroencephalography (EEG). Emerging evidence, however, suggests that right frontal EEG asymmetry might be linked to empathic responding. EEG was used to assess baseline asymmetries in frontal brain activity.

Confronting Threats to Meaning: A New Framework for Understanding Responses to Unsettling Events.

We all have models of the world, and when these models fit with what goes on around us we have a sense of meaning. Unfortunately, we are often faced with situations that violate, or threaten, our models, and when this happens we attempt to resolve these inconsistencies to restore a sense of meaning. It is well documented that we often try to reduce threats in indirect ways-ways that, at first glance, seem to reduce the negative feelings without actually solving the problem.

The voice of self-control: blocking the inner voice increases impulsive responding.

Philosophers and psychologists have long-debated the notion that the voice in our heads might help us to control our actions. Evidence from a number of lines of research suggests that verbal resources help us to focus attention, providing reason to believe that the inner voice might aid self-control via this capacity. In this study we explored the link between verbal resources and self-control by occupying the inner voice and then assessing behavioral indices of self-control.

Reflecting on God: religious primes can reduce neurophysiological response to errors.

The world is a vast and complex place that can sometimes generate feelings of uncertainty and distress for its inhabitants. Although religion is associated with a sense of meaning and order, it remains unclear whether religious belief can actually cause people to feel less anxiety and distress. To test the anxiolytic power of religion, we conducted two experiments focusing on the error-related negativity (ERN)-a neural signal that arises from the anterior cingulate cortex and is associated with defensive responses to errors.