Humans worldwide have long deplored hypocrisy, a concept that has been mentioned in texts dating back 100-1,000 years (e.g., the Analects of Confucius, the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, and the Qur'an).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite unresolved questions about replicability, a substantial number of studies find that disgust influences and arises from evaluations of immoral behavior and people. Departing from prior emphases, the current research examines a novel, related question: Are people who are viewed as disgusting (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent theorizing has suggested that awe is a collective emotion, as research has demonstrated a clear link between experiencing awe and behaving prosocially. The present research extends past work by investigating the scope and sources of awe-inspired prosociality, focusing on whether awe's effects extend beyond local/national interests to include global or humanitarian goals. Specifically, we examine how by increasing feelings of smallness, awe encourages a sense of global citizenship, promoting cosmopolitan (vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFor almost 50 years, psychologists have understood that what is beautiful is perceived as good. This simple and intuitively appealing hypothesis has been confirmed in many ways, prompting a wide range of studies documenting the depth and breadth of its truth. Yet, for what is arguably one of the most important forms of "goodness" that there is-moral goodness-research has told a different story.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Availability of safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 is critical for controlling the pandemic, but herd immunity can only be achieved with high vaccination coverage. The present research examined psychological factors associated with intentions to receive COVID-19 vaccination and whether reluctance towards novel pandemic vaccines are similar to vaccine hesitancy captured by a hypothetical measure used in previous research.
Method: Study 1 was administered to undergraduate students when COVID-19 was spreading exponentially (February-April 2020).
On hearing of others' offenses, people frequently intervene to encourage offenders to correct their wrongs. However, externally imposed reconciliatory behaviors may not effectively convince outside observers that offenders value victims' welfare and deserve forgiveness. Four studies examined meta-judgments of victim valuation and offender forgivability when restitution was initiated voluntarily versus externally coerced.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPoor people are punished more frequently and more severely than are wealthy people for their transgressions, suggesting that an agent's wealth affects how they are morally evaluated. To our knowledge, this has not been tested empirically. An initial study found that people expect the poor to be judged more harshly than the wealthy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople frequently label harmful (but not helpful) side effects as intentional. One proposed explanation for this asymmetry is that moral considerations fundamentally affect how people think about and apply the concept of intentional action. We propose something else: People interpret the meaning of questions about intentionally harming versus helping in fundamentally different ways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA wealth of research has investigated how and why people cast blame. However, less is known about blame-shifting (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeople typically apply the concept of intentionality to actions directed at achieving desired outcomes. For example, a businessperson might intentionally start a program aimed at increasing company profits. However, if starting the program leads to a foreknown and harmful side effect (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Self-efficacy is a core element of diabetes self-care and a primary target of diabetes interventions. Adults with serious mental illness (SMI) are twice as likely as adults among the general population to have Type 2 diabetes. This population faces substantial barriers (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study was designed to test whether romantic partners' mindfulness-present moment, nonjudgmental awareness-during a conflict discussion could buffer the effects of negative partner behaviors on neuroendocrine stress responses. Heterosexual couples (n=88 dyads) provided 5 saliva samples for cortisol assay during a laboratory session involving a conflict discussion task. Conflict behaviors were coded by outside observers using the System for Coding Interactions in Dyads, and partners rated their mindfulness during the task using the Toronto Mindfulness Scale.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo experiments (Experiment 1 N = 149, Experiment 2 N = 141) investigated how two mental states that underlie how perceivers reason about intentional action (awareness of action and desire for an outcome) influence blame and punishment for unintended (i.e., negligent) harms, and the role of anger in this process.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOver the last decade, many articles have suggested that the "badness" of side-effect outcomes influences perceivers' intuitions about intentionality, contradicting the traditional notion that mental state inferences lead to moral judgments rather than the reverse. Challenging this assertion, we argue that typically, consideration of intentionality involves thinking about "intentional actions" (things people do) rather than unintended outcomes. Across several studies, we offer an explanatory framework describing why side-effect asymmetries emerge.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSalivary nerve growth factor (sNGF) has recently been shown to respond to psychosocial stress, but little is known about how individual differences in this neurotrophic marker relate to stress vulnerability vs. resilience. This study followed up on these initial findings by examining sNGF responses to interpersonal stress in relation to both well-being and state/trait factors that determine the way a person approaches and is impacted by stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Neurotrophins such as nerve growth factor (NGF) may represent a stress-responsive system complementing the better known neuroendocrine (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis) and autonomic nervous system, but there is little evidence for NGF response to acute stress in humans because noninvasive measures have not been available. We investigated salivary NGF (sNGF) in 40 healthy young adults confronting a romantic conflict stressor.
Methods: Five saliva samples-two collected before and three after the conflict-were assayed for sNGF, cortisol (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal marker), and α-amylase (sAA; ANS marker).
Unlabelled: Genetic essentialism suggests that beliefs in genetic causes of mental illness will inflate a desire for social distance from affected individuals, regardless of specific disorder. However, genetic contingency theory predicts that genetic attributions will lead to an increased desire for social distance only from persons with disorders who are perceived as dangerous.
Purpose: To assess the interactive effect of diagnosis and attribution on social distance and actual helping decisions across disorders.
Mindfulness is known to improve individuals' and couples' subjective stress regulation, but little is known about how it impacts hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis responses to acute psychosocial stress. The current study tested effects of dispositional mindfulness facets on young adult couples' cortisol responses to a conflict discussion stressor, as well as associations with psychological adjustment. One hundred heterosexual couples completed the five facet mindfulness questionnaire one week before engaging in a conflict discussion task.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThree experiments explored how hypocrisy affects attributions of criminal guilt and the desire to punish hypocritical criminals. Study 1 established that via perceived hypocrisy, a hypocritical criminal was seen as more culpable and was punished more than a non-hypocritical criminal who committed an identical crime. Study 2 expanded on this, showing that negative moral emotions (anger and disgust) mediated the relationships between perceived hypocrisy, criminal guilt, and punishment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn ideal empathizer may attend to another person's behavior in order to understand that person, but it is also possible that accurately understanding other people involves top-down strategies. We hypothesized that perceivers draw on stereotypes to infer other people's thoughts and that stereotype use increases perceivers' accuracy. In this study, perceivers (N = 161) inferred the thoughts of multiple targets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSexual dysfunction is often implicated in depression and anxiety disorders, but the current nosology of sexual dysfunction, depression, and anxiety (i.e., DSM-IV) does not adequately address these relationships.
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