A synthesis of evidence for policy from behavioural science during COVID-19.

Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions1, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process2. In April 2020, an influential paper3 proposed 19 policy recommendations ('claims') detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims. We report the scale of evidence and whether evidence supports them to indicate applicability for policymaking. Two independent teams, involving 72 reviewers, found evidence for 18 of 19 claims, with both teams finding evidence supporting 16 (89%) of those 18 claims. The strongest evidence supported claims that anticipated culture, polarization and misinformation would be associated with policy effectiveness. Claims suggesting trusted leaders and positive social norms increased adherence to behavioural interventions also had strong empirical support, as did appealing to social consensus or bipartisan agreement. Targeted language in messaging yielded mixed effects and there were no effects for highlighting individual benefits or protecting others. No available evidence existed to assess any distinct differences in effects between using the terms 'physical distancing' and 'social distancing'. Analysis of 463 papers containing data showed generally large samples; 418 involved human participants with a mean of 16,848 (median of 1,699). That statistical power underscored improved suitability of behavioural science research for informing policy decisions. Furthermore, by implementing a standardized approach to evidence selection and synthesis, we amplify broader implications for advancing scientific evidence in policy formulation and prioritization.

Beneficial effects of communicating intentions when delivering moral criticism: Cognitive and neural responses.

People often do not accept criticism on their morality, especially when delivered by outgroup members. In two preregistered studies, we investigated whether people become more receptive to such negative feedback when feedback senders communicate their intention to help. Participants received negative feedback from ostensible others on their selfish (rather than altruistic) decisions in a donation task. We manipulated the identity of a feedback sender (ingroup vs. outgroup) and the intention that they provided for giving feedback. A sender either did not communicate any intentions, indicated the intention to help the feedback receiver improve, or communicated the intention to show moral superiority. We measured participants' self-reported responses to the feedback (Study 1, N = 44) and additionally recorded an EEG in Study 2 (N = 34). Results showed that when no intentions were communicated, participants assumed worse intentions from outgroup senders than ingroup senders (Study 1). However, group membership had no significant effect once feedback senders made their intentions explicit. Moreover, across studies, when feedback senders communicated their intention to help, participants perceived feedback as less unfair compared with when senders tried to convey their moral superiority. Complementing these results, exploratory event-related potential results of Study 2 suggested that communicating the intention to help reduced participants' attentional vigilance toward negative feedback messages on their morality (i.e., decreased P200 amplitudes). These results demonstrate the beneficial effects of communicating the intention to help when one tries to encourage others' moral growth through criticism.

Gender Identification Beyond the Binary and Its Consequences for Social Well-Being.

Recent societal initiatives (e.g., gender-neutral toilets, clothing, and language) highlight the ongoing shift of gender away from binary categories: "man" and "woman." We identified and investigated two reasons for this shift: that many people may not identify with strictly binary categories and that this may have negative social consequences. Employing a multiple-identification model, we measured intergroup self-categorization with both men and women (Studies 1 and 2), as well as with a "third gender" (Study 3) and investigated how multiple identifications are related to social well-being (Studies 2 and 3). In Study 1 (N = 182, mean age = 32.74, 121 women), we found that a binary model was not the best fit for our gender identification data. In Study 2 (N = 482, mean age = 30.98, 240 AFABs), we found four clusters of gender identification, replicating previous research. Furthermore, we found that gender non-conforming participants reported being less able to be their authentic selves than binary participants. We also found that participants who identified lowly with both binary genders reported lower well-being in general (belongingness, self-esteem, life satisfaction, positive affect). In Study 3 (N = 280, mean age = 36.97, 140 AFABs), we found that asking about a third gender seemed to change how much participants reported identifying with men and women. We also found that gender non-conforming participants reported lower authenticity, belongingness, and self-esteem. We conclude that moving away from binary categories of gender may be beneficial to many non-conforming people of different nationalities, including cisgender, heterosexual people.

Adversarial alignment enables competing models to engage in cooperative theory building toward cumulative science.

Crises in science concern not only methods, statistics, and results but also, theory development. Beyond the indispensable refinement of tools and procedures, resolving crises would also benefit from a deeper understanding of the concepts and processes guiding research. Usually, theories compete, and some lose, incentivizing destruction of seemingly opposing views. This does not necessarily contribute to accumulating insights, and it may incur collateral damage (e.g., impairing cognitive processes and collegial relations). To develop a more constructive model, we built on adversarial collaboration, which integrates incompatible results into agreed-on new empirical research to test competing hypotheses [D. Kahneman, Am. Psychol. 58, 723-730 (2003)]. Applying theory and evidence from the behavioral sciences, we address the group dynamic complexities of adversarial interactions between scientists. We illustrate the added value of considering these in an "adversarial alignment" that addressed competing conceptual frameworks from five different theories of social evaluation. Negotiating a joint framework required two preconditions and several guidelines. First, we reframed our interactions from competitive rivalry to cooperative pursuit of a joint goal, and second, we assumed scientific competence and good intentions, enabling cooperation toward that goal. Then, we applied five rules for successful multiparty negotiations: 1) leveling the playing field, 2) capitalizing on curiosity, 3) producing measurable progress, 4) working toward mutual gain, and 5) being aware of the downside alternative. Together, these guidelines can encourage others to create conditions that allow for theoretical alignments and develop cumulative science.

Gender Stereotypes.

There are many differences between men and women. To some extent, these are captured in the stereotypical images of these groups. Stereotypes about the way men and women think and behave are widely shared, suggesting a kernel of truth. However, stereotypical expectations not only reflect existing differences, but also impact the way men and women define themselves and are treated by others. This article reviews evidence on the nature and content of gender stereotypes and considers how these relate to gender differences in important life outcomes. Empirical studies show that gender stereotypes affect the way people attend to, interpret, and remember information about themselves and others. Considering the cognitive and motivational functions of gender stereotypes helps us understand their impact on implicit beliefs and communications about men and women. Knowledge of the literature on this subject can benefit the fair judgment of individuals in situations where gender stereotypes are likely to play a role.

The Psychology of Morality: A Review and Analysis of Empirical Studies Published From 1940 Through 2017.

We review empirical research on (social) psychology of morality to identify which issues and relations are well documented by existing data and which areas of inquiry are in need of further empirical evidence. An electronic literature search yielded a total of 1,278 relevant research articles published from 1940 through 2017. These were subjected to expert content analysis and standardized bibliometric analysis to classify research questions and relate these to (trends in) empirical approaches that characterize research on morality. We categorize the research questions addressed in this literature into five different themes and consider how empirical approaches within each of these themes have addressed psychological antecedents and implications of moral behavior. We conclude that some key features of theoretical questions relating to human morality are not systematically captured in empirical research and are in need of further investigation.

Gender contributes to personal research funding success in The Netherlands.

We examined the application and review materials of three calls (n=2,823) of a prestigious grant for personal research funding in a national full population of early career scientists awarded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Results showed evidence of gender bias in application evaluations and success rates, as well as in language use in instructions and evaluation sheets. Male applicants received significantly more competitive "quality of researcher" evaluations (but not "quality of proposal" evaluations) and had significantly higher application success rates than female applicants. Gender disparities were most prevalent in scientific disciplines with the highest number of applications and with equal gender distribution among the applicants (i.e., life sciences and social sciences). Moreover, content analyses of the instructional and evaluation materials revealed the use of gendered language favoring male applicants. Overall, our data reveal a 4% "loss" of women during the grant review procedure, and illustrate the perpetuation of the funding gap, which contributes to the underrepresentation of women in academia.

Mastering moral misery: Emotional and coping responses to intragroup morality (vs. competence) evaluations.

In social groups, individuals are often confronted with evaluations of their behaviour by other group members and are motivated to adapt their own behaviour accordingly. In two studies we examine emotional responses towards, and perceived coping abilities with, morality vs. competence evaluations individuals receive from other in-group members. In Study 1, we show that evaluations of one's immoral behaviour primarily induce guilt, whereas evaluations of incompetent behaviour raise anger. In Study 2, we elaborate on the psychological process associated with these emotional responses, and demonstrate that evaluations of immorality, compared to incompetence, diminish group members' perceived coping abilities, which in turn intensifies feelings of guilt. However, when anticipating an opportunity to restore one's self-image as a moral group member, perceived coping abilities are increased and the experience of guilt is alleviated. Together these studies demonstrate how group members can overcome their moral misery when restoring their self-image.

Social identification is generally a prerequisite for group success and does not preclude intragroup differentiation.

On the basis of research in the social identity tradition, we contend (a) that identification and differentiation are not mutually exclusive, (b) that a sequence in which identification gives way to differentiation is not necessarily associated with superior organizational outcomes, and

The many ways to be marginal in a group.

Previous theory and research primarily address marginal group members on the path to achieve core membership status. The authors argue that these only represent one form of marginality and that there are many other ways to be marginal within the group. The authors develop a dynamic model in which marginality is conceptualized as resulting from group and individual negotiation about inclusion (the Marginality as Resulting From Group and Individual Negotiation About Inclusion [MARGINI] model), and where individual and group inclusion goals can converge (resulting in relatively stable forms of marginality) or diverge (resulting in less stable forms of marginality). When the marginal position is unstable, individuals can either be motivated to move toward or move further away from the group, and such changing inclusion goals are associated with different emotions and behaviors. The authors argue that one needs to understand the interplay between individual and group inclusion goals to predict and explain the full complexity and diversity of the behavior of marginal group members.

Human cooperation in changing groups in a large-scale public goods game.

How people cooperate to provide public goods is an important scientific question and relates to many societal problems. Previous research studied how people cooperate in stable groups in repeated or one-time-only encounters. However, most real-world public good problems occur in groups with a gradually changing composition due to old members leaving and new members arriving. How group changes are related to cooperation in public good provision is not well understood. To address this issue, we analyze a dataset from an online public goods game comprising approximately 1.5 million contribution decisions made by about 135 thousand players in about 11.3 thousand groups with about 234 thousand changes in group composition. We find that changes in group composition negatively relate to cooperation. Our results suggest that this is related to individuals contributing less in the role of newcomers than in the role of incumbents. During the process of moving from newcomer status to incumbent status, individuals cooperate more and more in line with incumbents.

Gender-bias primes elicit queen-bee responses among senior policewomen.

Queen bees are senior women in male-dominated organizations who have achieved success by emphasizing how they differ from other women. Although the behavior of queen bees tends to be seen as contributing to gender disparities in career outcomes, we argue that queen-bee behavior is actually a result of the gender bias and social identity threat that produce gender disparities in career outcomes. In the experiment reported here, we asked separate groups of senior policewomen to recall the presence or absence of gender bias during their careers, and we measured queen-bee responses (i.e., masculine self-descriptions, in-group distancing, and denying of discrimination). Such gender-bias priming increased queen-bee responses among policewomen with low gender identification, but policewomen with high gender identification responded with increased motivation to improve opportunities for other women. These results suggest that gender-biased work environments shape women's behavior by stimulating women with low gender identification to dissociate with other women and to display queen-bee responses as a way to achieve individual mobility.

Science as collaborative knowledge generation.

The COVID-19 pandemic points to the need for scientists to pool their efforts in order to understand this disease and respond to the ensuing crisis. Other global challenges also require such scientific cooperation. Yet in academic institutions, reward structures and incentives are based on systems that primarily fuel the competition between (groups of) scientific researchers. Competition between individual researchers, research groups, research approaches, and scientific disciplines is seen as an important selection mechanism and driver of academic excellence. These expected benefits of competition have come to define the organizational culture in academia. There are clear indications that the overreliance on competitive models undermines cooperative exchanges that might lead to higher quality insights. This damages the well-being and productivity of individual researchers and impedes efforts towards collaborative knowledge generation. Insights from social and organizational psychology on the side effects of relying on performance targets, prioritizing the achievement of success over the avoidance of failure, and emphasizing self-interest and efficiency, clarify implicit mechanisms that may spoil valid attempts at transformation. The analysis presented here elucidates that a broader change in the academic culture is needed to truly benefit from current attempts to create more open and collaborative practices for cumulative knowledge generation.

The Queen Bee phenomenon in Academia 15 years after: Does it still exist, and if so, why?

Fifteen years ago, the British Journal of Social Psychology published a set of studies on male and female academics, documenting that female faculty members were more likely than male faculty members to express stereotyped views of women at the beginning of their academic careers (PhD candidates; Ellemers et al., 2004, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 43, 3). At the same time, the self-descriptions of female faculty members were just as masculine as those of their male colleagues. Ellemers and colleagues (2004, Br. J. Soc. Psychol., 43, 3) referred to this combination of results as indicating the existence of a 'Queen Bee (QB) phenomenon' in academia. The present contribution investigates whether the QB phenomenon is also found among current generations of academics, investigating this in two recent samples of academic professionals (N = 462; N = 339). Our findings demonstrate that the phenomenon first documented in 2004 still exists: Advanced career female academics are more likely than their male counterparts to underestimate the career commitment of women at the beginning of their academic careers. At the same time, both male and female academics at advanced career stages describe themselves in more masculine terms than those at early career stages. We argue this indicates a response pattern in which successful women emulate the masculinity of the work environment. To indicate this, the term 'self-group distancing' might be more appropriate than 'Queen Bee effect'.

Does National Context Matter When Women Surpass Their Partner in Status?

There is growing evidence that couples in non-traditional relationships in which the woman attains higher status than her male partner experience more negative relationship outcomes than traditional couples. A possible reason is that non-traditional couples violate persisting gender stereotypes that prescribe men to be breadwinners and women to be caregivers of the family. In the current study (N = 2,748), we investigated whether a country's gender-stereotypical culture predicts non-traditional men and women's relationship and life outcomes. We used the European Sustainable Workforce Survey, which is conducted in nine European countries. Two indicators of countries' gender-stereotypical culture are used: Gender Empowerment Measure and implicit gender stereotypes. We found that women's income and -to a lesser extent- education degree relative to their male partner affected outcomes such as relationship quality, negative emotions, and experienced time pressure. Furthermore, men and women living in countries with a traditional gender-stereotypical culture (e.g., Netherlands, Hungary) reported lower relationship quality when women earned more than their partners. Relative income differences did not affect the relationship quality of participants living in egalitarian countries (e.g., Sweden, Finland). Also, couples in which the woman is more highly educated than the man reported higher relationship quality in egalitarian countries, but not in traditional countries. Our findings suggest that dominant beliefs and ideologies in society can hinder or facilitate couples in non-traditional relationships.

Navigating the social world: Toward an integrated framework for evaluating self, individuals, and groups.

Social evaluation occurs at personal, interpersonal, group, and intergroup levels, with competing theories and evidence. Five models engage in adversarial collaboration, to identify common conceptual ground, ongoing controversies, and continuing agendas: Dual Perspective Model (Abele & Wojciszke, 2007); Behavioral Regulation Model (Leach, Ellemers, & Barreto, 2007); Dimensional Compensation Model (Yzerbyt et al., 2005); Stereotype Content Model (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002); and Agency-Beliefs-Communion Model (Koch, Imhoff, Dotsch, Unkelbach, & Alves, 2016). Each has distinctive focus, theoretical roots, premises, and evidence. Controversies dispute dimensions: number, organization, definition, and labeling; their relative priority; and their relationship. Our first integration suggests 2 fundamental dimensions: Vertical (agency, competence, "getting ahead") and Horizontal (communion, warmth, "getting along"), with respective facets of ability and assertiveness (Vertical) and friendliness and morality (Horizontal). Depending on context, a third dimension is conservative versus progressive Beliefs. Second, different criteria for priority favor different dimensions: processing speed and subjective weight (Horizontal); pragmatic diagnosticity (Vertical); moderators include number and type of target, target-perceiver relationship, context. Finally, the relation between dimensions has similar operational moderators. As an integrative framework, the dimensions' dynamics also depend on perceiver goals (comprehension, efficiency, harmony, compatibility), each balancing top-down and bottom-up processes, for epistemic or hedonic functions. One emerging insight is that the nature and number of targets each of these models typically examines alters perceivers' evaluative goal and how bottom-up information or top-down inferences interact. This framework benefits theoretical parsimony and new research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Trust predicts COVID-19 prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions in 23 countries.

The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals' well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled. Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one's own health. Instead, individuals are asked to adapt their behaviors to protect the community at large. This raises the question of which social concerns and moral principles make people willing to do so. We considered in 23 countries (N = 6948) individuals' willingness to engage in prescribed and discretionary behaviors, as well as country-level and individual-level factors that might drive such behavioral intentions. Results from multilevel multiple regressions, with country as the nesting variable, showed that publicized number of infections were not significantly related to individual intentions to comply with the prescribed measures and intentions to engage in discretionary prosocial behaviors. Instead, psychological differences in terms of trust in government, citizens, and in particular toward science predicted individuals' behavioral intentions across countries. The more people endorsed moral principles of fairness and care (vs. loyalty and authority), the more they were inclined to report trust in science, which, in turn, statistically predicted prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions. Results have implications for the type of intervention and public communication strategies that should be most effective to induce the behavioral changes that are needed to control the COVID-19 outbreak.

To be or not to be: the impact of implicit versus explicit inappropriate social categorizations on the self.

This paper investigates how targets respond to treatment that is explicitly or implicitly based on a contextually inappropriate social categorization. In three different experimental studies, a team member appeared to use participants' gender and not participants' personal preference to assign a proofreading task. Targets reported more negative self-evaluations in response to implicit categorical treatment in comparison to explicit categorical treatment. In contrast, explicit categorical treatment increased target's resistance to the treatment received. The pattern of results across the three studies shows that treatment based on a contextually inappropriate category is problematic even when the categorization is ambiguous or associated with attractive and positive outcomes.