Does reductive information increase satisfaction with scientific explanations? Three preregistered tests of the reductive allure effect.

Understanding information processing biases is critical for improving scientific literacy. Research suggests that people rate scientific explanations with reductive jargon (e.g.

Toward a Comprehensive, Data-Driven Model of American Political Goals: Recognizing the "Values" and "Vices" Within Both Liberalism and Conservativism.

When a person indicates they are "liberal" or "conservative," an important part of what they are communicating is their for how they would like society to be structured. However, past theories have described these goals in dramatically different fashions, suggesting that either conservativism or liberalism reflects a divisive or unifying goal. To help overcome this impasse, we systematically compared a broad, representative sample of all possible higher-order goals (drawn a previous lexical investigation of more than 1,000 goals) to the political ideology of American adults (total = 1,588).

Getting COVID-19: Anticipated negative emotions are worse than experienced negative emotions.

Objective: When people think about negative events that may occur in the future, they tend to overestimate their emotional reactions, and these "affective forecasts" can influence their present behavior (Wilson and Gilbert, 2003). The present research examined affective forecasting for COVID-19 infection including the associations between emotions and preventive intentions and behavior.

Methods: In two studies, we compared individuals' anticipated emotions and recalled emotions for COVID-19 infection.

The Naturalness Bias Influences Drug and Vaccine Decisions across Cultures.

The naturalness bias - preferring natural to synthetic drugs or vaccines - occurred across cultures (Americans, Canadians, and Chinese).Chinese participants showed a stronger naturalness bias than Americans did when the medical context was focused on vaccination, and safety concerns mediated this effect.The naturalness bias may influence medical decision making across cultures, but Chinese participants may be more sensitive to naturalness in a vaccine context.

Development and Validation of the Single-Item Mindfulness Scale (SIMS).

Mindfulness is a focused attention to and acceptance of present experiences. Although several reliable and valid multi-item measures of trait mindfulness exist, researchers may sometimes want a short and quick measure of mindfulness. In this project, we developed and validated the Single-Item Mindfulness Scale (SIMS) to assess trait mindfulness.

Religiosity and the Naturalness Bias in Drug and Vaccine Choices.

Research reveals a bias for natural versus synthetic drugs. We sought to determine if this bias is associated with religiosity. Three cross-sectional studies (N = 1399 U.

What is the "opposite" of a value? A lexical investigation into the structure of generally undesirable goal content.

Objectives: Past taxonomies of goal-content have focused (either exclusively or predominantly) on generally-desirable values, and they suggest that some values oppose other values. However, many goals are generally-undesirable (i.e.

Evaluation of the moderated-expression and differential configuration hypotheses in the context of "successful" or "noncriminal" psychopathy.

The concept of "successful" psychopathy has intrigued the field, yet relatively little actual science exists to understand what makes those high in psychopathic traits more or less successful, or even what constitutes "success." In the current study, we examined the validity of the moderated expression hypothesis, including an elaborated version that considers differential configuration of psychopathy traits, as accounting for differences in criminal and noncriminal (the most common operationalization of "success") expressions of psychopathy. The latter was conceptualized from the perspective of the triarchic psychopathy model.

Be Responsible?

The bystander effect reveals that people are less likely to help a person in need when others are present. We examined the impact of priming the concept of responsibility on the bystander effect in a field study. Lone pedestrians ( = 259) were randomly assigned to a two (Bystanders: none and three nonresponsive bystanders) by two (Shirt: blank shirt and shirt with "Be Responsible" written on the front) design.

Social psychology and COVID-19: What the field can tell us about behavior in a pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc in the lives of people around the world. Pandemics are powerful situations that can be examined from a social psychological lens. In this special section, four articles present data collected before and during the pandemic, providing a type of quasi-experimental design that helped examine the impact of the pandemic on social behavior.

What shall we call God? An exploration of metaphors coded from descriptions of God from a large U.S. undergraduate sample.

People use numerous metaphors to describe God. God is seen as a bearded man, light, and love. Based on metaphor theories, the metaphors people use to refer to God reflect how people think about God and could, in turn, reflect their worldview.

Trait mindfulness is negatively associated with distress related to COVID-19.

Unlabelled: Research suggests that mindfulness is associated with psychological health including a healthier response to stressors.

Objective: This research tested associations between trait mindfulness and mental health factors related to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

Methods: Two studies (Study 1  = 248 college students; Study 2  = 300 U.

Predictors of the intention to receive a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

Background: It is imperative to understand the predictors of vaccine hesitancy for current and future pandemics.

Methods: A representative sample (age, race & gender) of 1054 US adults was collected in October 2020 to examine the predictors of vaccine hesitancy. Participants were asked several questions including their intention to receive a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Leveraging individual differences to understand grounded procedures.

We applaud the goals and execution of the target article, but note that individual differences do not receive much attention. This is a shortcoming because individual differences can play a vital role in theory testing. In our commentary, we describe programs of research of this type and also apply similar thinking to the mechanisms proposed in the target article.

Lexical derivation of the PINT taxonomy of goals: Prominence, inclusiveness, negativity prevention, and tradition.

What do people want? Few questions are more fundamental to psychological science than this. Yet, existing taxonomies disagree on both the number and content of goals. Thus, we adopted a lexical approach and investigated the structure of goal-relevant words from the natural English lexicon.

A Behavioral Confirmation and Reduction of the Natural versus Synthetic Drug Bias.

Research reveals a biased preference for natural v. synthetic drugs; however, this research is based on self-report and has not examined ways to reduce the bias. We examined these issues in 5 studies involving 1125 participants.

Development and validation of the Single Item Trait Empathy Scale (SITES).

Empathy involves feeling compassion for others and imagining how they feel. In this article, we develop and validate the Single Item Trait Empathy Scale (SITES), which contains only one item that takes seconds to complete. In seven studies (N=5,724), the SITES was found to be both reliable and valid.

The sweet life: The effect of mindful chocolate consumption on mood.

Chocolate consumption is anecdotally associated with an increase in happiness, but little experimental work has examined this effect. We combined a food type manipulation (chocolate vs. crackers) with a mindfulness manipulation (mindful consumption vs.

Mindfulness reduces the correspondence bias.

The correspondence bias (CB) refers to the idea that people sometimes give undue weight to dispositional rather than situational factors when explaining behaviours and attitudes. Three experiments examined whether mindfulness, a non-judgmental focus on the present moment, could reduce the CB. Participants engaged in a brief mindfulness exercise (the raisin task), a control task, or an attention to detail task before completing a typical CB measure involving an attitude-attribution paradigm.

The Influence of Safety, Efficacy, and Medical Condition Severity on Natural versus Synthetic Drug Preference.

Research indicates that there is a preference for natural v. synthetic products, but the influence of this preference on drug choice in the medical domain is largely unknown. We present 5 studies in which participants were asked to consider a hypothetical situation in which they had a medical issue requiring pharmacological therapy.

Bah humbug: Unexpected Christmas cards and the reciprocity norm.

The reciprocity norm refers to the expectation that people will help those who helped them. A well-known study revealed that the norm is strong with Christmas cards, with 20% of people reciprocating a Christmas card received from a stranger. I attempted to conceptually replicate and extend this effect.

The myth of the angry atheist.

Atheists are often portrayed in the media and elsewhere as angry individuals. Although atheists disagree with the pillar of many religions, namely the existence of a God, it may not necessarily be the case that they are angry individuals. The prevalence and accuracy of angry-atheist perceptions were examined in 7 studies with 1,677 participants from multiple institutions and locations in the United States.

Development and validation of the Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS).

Main Objectives: The narcissistic personality is characterized by grandiosity, entitlement, and low empathy. This paper describes the development and validation of the Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS). Although the use of longer instruments is superior in most circumstances, we recommend the SINS in some circumstances (e.

Motivational versus metabolic effects of carbohydrates on self-control.

Self-control is critical for achievement and well-being. However, people's capacity for self-control is limited and becomes depleted through use. One prominent explanation for this depletion posits that self-control consumes energy through carbohydrate metabolization, which further suggests that ingesting carbohydrates improves self-control.

Color in context: psychological context moderates the influence of red on approach- and avoidance-motivated behavior.

Background: A basic premise of the recently proffered color-in-context model is that the influence of color on psychological functioning varies as a function of the psychological context in which color is perceived. Some research has examined the appetitive and aversive implications of viewing the color red in romance- and achievement-relevant contexts, respectively, but in all existing empirical work approach and avoidance behavior has been studied in separate tasks and separate experiments. Research is needed to directly test whether red influences the same behavior differently depending entirely on psychological context.