Retraction Note to: Happiness as alchemy: Positive mood leads to self-serving responses to social comparisons.

[This retracts the article DOI: 10.1007/s11031-011-9216-y.].

Power increases infidelity among men and women.

Data from a large survey of 1,561 professionals were used to examine the relationship between power and infidelity and the process underlying this relationship. Results showed that elevated power is positively associated with infidelity because power increases confidence in the ability to attract partners. This association was found for both actual infidelity and intentions to engage in infidelity in the future.

Happiness as alchemy: Positive mood leads to self-serving responses to social comparisons.

People in a positive mood process information in ways that reinforce and maintain this positive mood. The current studies examine how positive mood influences responses to social comparisons and demonstrates that people in a positive mood interpret ambiguous information about comparison others in self-benefitting ways. Specifically, four experiments demonstrate that compared to negative mood or neutral mood participants, participants in a positive mood engage in effortful re-interpretations of ambiguously similar comparison targets so that they may assimilate to upward comparison targets and contrast from downward comparison targets.

Coping with chaos: how disordered contexts promote stereotyping and discrimination.

Being the victim of discrimination can have serious negative health- and quality-of-life-related consequences. Yet, could being discriminated against depend on such seemingly trivial matters as garbage on the streets? In this study, we show, in two field experiments, that disordered contexts (such as litter or a broken-up sidewalk and an abandoned bicycle) indeed promote stereotyping and discrimination in real-world situations and, in three lab experiments, that it is a heightened need for structure that mediates these effects (number of subjects: between 40 and 70 per experiment). These findings considerably advance our knowledge of the impact of the physical environment on stereotyping and discrimination and have clear policy implications: Diagnose environmental disorder early and intervene immediately.

What drives self-affirmation effects? On the importance of differentiating value affirmation and attribute affirmation.

In a series of studies, it is demonstrated that different types of self-affirmation procedures produce different effects. Affirming personally important values (value affirmation) increases self-clarity but not self-esteem. Affirming positive qualities of the self (attribute affirmation) increases self-esteem but not self-clarity (Study 1).

When failure feels better than success: Self-salience, self-consistency, and affect.

People like self-consistent feedback because it induces feelings of predictability and control, but they like positive feedback because it induces positive self-esteem. We show that self-salience determines whether people are more consistency- or positivity-driven. When self-knowledge is salient, people's primary responses (i.

The influence of mood on attribution.

Four studies show that mood systematically affects attributions of observed behavior by altering relative attention to actor and context. When the actor is more salient, sad people are more inclined to perceive an actor in stable trait terms and favor dispositional over situational explanations, whereas the opposite is true for happy people (Studies 1-3). However, when the context is made more salient, this pattern reverses, such that those in a negative mood make more situational attributions than those in a positive mood (Study 4).

Mood and context-dependence: Positive mood increases and negative mood decreases the effects of context on perception.

Five studies show that mood affects context-dependence, such that negative mood promotes attention to a salient target, whereas positive mood enhances attention to both target and context. Judgments of temperature (Study 1), weight (Study 2), and size (Studies 3 and 4) were more strongly affected by the context in a positive than in a negative mood. Moreover, these effects extend to the social domain: When perceiving a target person's emotions, happy people were more influenced by the context than were sad people (Study 5).

Power increases hypocrisy: moralizing in reasoning, immorality in behavior.

In five studies, we explored whether power increases moral hypocrisy (i.e., imposing strict moral standards on other people but practicing less strict moral behavior oneself).

Affects of the unexpected: when inconsistency feels good (or bad).

Affective responses to disconfirmation of expectancies have paradoxical features: Incongruency is uncomfortable and elicits negative affect, but how do people feel when the incongruent outcome is positive? This article shows that affective responses to disconfirmed expectancies depend on whether people value consistency and thus focus on the expectancy-congruency of the outcome or on its valence. People with high need for structure, a prevention focus, or for whom mortality is salient, assign more value to consistency and are more congruency focused: They feel more positive after congruent outcomes than after incongruent outcomes (independent of valence). People with low need for structure, a promotion focus, or for whom mortality is not salient, value consistency less and are more outcome focused: They feel more positive after positive outcomes than after negative outcomes (independent of congruency).

It depends on how you look at it: being versus becoming mindsets determine responses to social comparisons.

The current studies examine how focusing on evaluation of the current self (a 'being' mindset) or focusing on the projection of future selves (a 'becoming mindset') influences responses to social comparison information. The studies show that the mindset of individuals, independent of other situational variables, determines whether individuals regard targets as threatening, how targets influence self-evaluations, and how targets affect performance on relevant tasks. The studies also show that mindsets determine what kinds of social comparison information are influential.

Differentiating social and personal power: opposite effects on stereotyping, but parallel effects on behavioral approach tendencies.

How does power affect behavior? We posit that this depends on the type of power. We distinguish between social power (power over other people) and personal power (freedom from other people) and argue that these two types of power have opposite associations with independence and interdependence. We propose that when the distinction between independence and interdependence is relevant, social power and personal power will have opposite effects; however, they will have parallel effects when the distinction is irrelevant.

How power influences moral thinking.

The authors conducted 5 studies to test the idea that both thinking about and having power affects the way in which people resolve moral dilemmas. It is shown that high power increases the use of rule-based (deontological) moral thinking styles, whereas low power increases reliance on outcome-based (consequentialist) moral thinking. Stated differently, in determining whether an act is right or wrong, the powerful focus on whether rules and principles are violated, whereas the powerless focus on the consequences.

Who wants feedback? An investigation of the variables influencing residents' feedback-seeking behavior in relation to night shifts.

Purpose: The literature on feedback in clinical medical education has predominantly treated trainees as passive recipients. Past research has focused on how clinical supervisors can use feedback to improve a trainee's performance. On the basis of research in social and organizational psychology, the authors reconceptualized residents as active seekers of feedback.

Being there with others: how people make environments norm-relevant.

In two studies we show that people make environments norm-relevant and this increases the likelihood that environments influence norm-relevant judgments. When people see environments without having people on their mind, this effect does not occur. Specifically, when exposed to an environment (a library), people's perceived importance of environment-relevant norms (be silent in libraries) increases, when the concept of 'people' is primed compared to when this is not the case.

Stereotyping based on voice in the presence of individuating information: vocal femininity affects perceived competence but not warmth.

In two experiments the authors examined the effect of vocal cues on warmth and competence judgments when other competing information was concurrently available. In Experiment 1, using male and female speakers posing as job applicants, the authors investigated how applicants' vocal cues and résumé information impacted judgments of competence and warmth. Results showed competence was solely affected by vocal femininity-applicants with masculine voices were rated as more competent than applicants with feminine voices, regardless of applicant gender or résumé information.

Why people stereotype affects how they stereotype: the differential influence of comprehension goals and self-enhancement goals on stereotyping.

In four studies, the authors examined the hypothesis that the way people stereotype is determined by the motives that instigate it. Study 1 measured and demonstrated the effectiveness of a commonly used priming technique to manipulate comprehension and self-enhancement goals. Study 2 demonstrated that why people stereotype determines how they stereotype: When a comprehension goal was salient, positive as well as negative stereotypes were applied, whereas a salient self-enhancement goal led to the application of negative but not positive stereotypes.

Moods as spotlights: the influence of mood on accessibility effects.

Three studies explore the manner in which one's mood may affect the use and impact of accessible information on judgments. Specifically, the authors demonstrated that positive and negative moods differentially influence the direction of accessibility effects (assimilation, contrast) by determining whether abstract traits or concrete actor-trait links are primed. Study 1 investigated the impact of positive versus negative mood on the judgmental impact of trait-implying behaviors and found that positive moods lead to assimilation and negative moods to contrast.

Emotion elicitor or emotion messenger? Subliminal priming reveals two faces of facial expressions.

Facial emotional expressions can serve both as emotional stimuli and as communicative signals. The research reported here was conducted to illustrate how responses to both roles of facial emotional expressions unfold over time. As an emotion elicitor, a facial emotional expression (e.

Unconscious and spontaneous and...complex: the three selves model of social comparison assimilation and contrast.

Several theoretical perspectives predict that social comparisons lead to simple, default-driven effects when triggered outside of conscious awareness. These theoretical perspectives differ, however, in the default effects they predict. Some theories argue for self-evaluative contrast, whereas others argue for self-evaluative assimilation.

Silence and table manners: when environments activate norms.

Two studies tested the conditions under which an environment (e.g., library, restaurant) raises the relevance of environment-specific social norms (e.

How to heat up from the cold: examining the preconditions for (unconscious) mood effects.

What are the necessary preconditions to make people feel good or bad? In this research, the authors aimed to uncover the bare essentials of mood induction. Several induction techniques exist, and most of these techniques demand a relatively high amount of cognitive capacity. Moreover, to be effective, most techniques require conscious awareness.

The secret life of emotions.

The possibility of unconsciously evoked emotions is often denied because awareness of an emotion's cause is considered to be precisely what produces the emotion. However, we argue that because emotional responding is important for successful living, both global and specific emotional responses can be induced without awareness. The present research used quick and super-quick subliminal priming techniques, and cognitive, feelings, and behavioral measures, to test this hypothesis.

Terror management and stereotyping: why do people stereotype when mortality is salient?

Three studies examine two routes by which mortality threats may lead to stereotyping. Mortality salience may activate both a comprehension goal and an enhancement goal. Enhancement goals are likely to be more active in situations where intergroup competition or conflict is salient.

No pain, no gain: the conditions under which upward comparisons lead to better performance.

In 3 studies, the authors explored the relation between threatening upward social comparisons and performance. In an initial study, participants were exposed to comparison targets who either threatened or boosted self-evaluations and then completed a performance task. Participants exposed to the threatening target performed better than those in a control group, whereas those exposed to the nonthreatening target performed worse.