The friend number paradox.

We identify a , that is, a mismatch between people's preferences for the friends they might acquire in social interactions and their predictions of others' preferences. People predict that others are attracted to them if they have a relatively large number of friends. However, they personally prefer to make friends with someone who has a relatively small number of friends.

Looking Forward and Looking Back: The Likelihood of an Event's Future Reoccurrence Affects Perceptions of the Time It Occurred in the Past.

Past events are perceived to be temporally more distant when they are unlikely rather than likely to reoccur in the future. This can be because (a) future events that are unlikely to occur are perceived to be temporally remote and (b) these feelings of remoteness can generalize and influence subjective distance judgments of the events' occurrences in the past. Six studies confirmed this effect and provided insights into the processes that underlie it.

Actors conform, observers react: the effects of behavioral synchrony on conformity.

Engaging in synchronous behavior can induce a more general disposition to copy others, which increases the tendency to conform to others' preferences in an unrelated choice situation. In contrast, observing others perform synchronous behavior can induce psychological reactance and decrease conformity to others' preferences. Five experiments confirmed these different effects and circumscribed the conditions in which they occurred.

When does playing hard to get increase romantic attraction?

Folk wisdom suggests playing hard to get is an effective strategy in romantic attraction. However, prior research has yielded little support for this belief. This article seeks to reconcile these contrasting views by investigating how 2 hitherto unconsidered factors, (a) the asymmetry between wanting (motivational) and liking (affective) responses and (b) the degree of psychological commitment, can determine the efficacy of playing hard to get.

The art and science of guessing.

This research examined how one affectively reacts to others' guesses at a value one cares about, such as one's income. Conventional wisdom suggests that people will feel happier upon receiving more favorable guesses (e.g.

Wanting, liking, and preference construction.

According to theories on preference construction, multiple preferences result from multiple contexts (e.g., loss vs.