Data from the Human Penguin Project, a cross-national dataset testing social thermoregulation principles.

In the Human Penguin Project (N = 1755), 15 research groups from 12 countries collected body temperature, demographic variables, social network indices, seven widely-used psychological scales and two newly developed questionnaires (the Social Thermoregulation and Risk Avoidance Questionnaire (STRAQ-1) and the Kama Muta Frequency Scale (KAMF)). They were collected to investigate the relationship between environmental factors (e.g., geographical, climate etc.) and human behaviors, which is a long-standing inquiry in the scientific community. More specifically, the present project was designed to test principles surrounding the idea of social thermoregulation, which posits that social networks help people to regulate their core body temperature. The results showed that all scales in the current project have sufficient to good psychometrical properties. Unlike previous crowdsourced projects, this dataset includes not only the cleaned raw data but also all the validation of questionnaires in 9 different languages, thus providing a valuable resource for psychological scientists who are interested in cross-national, environment-human interaction studies.

Does distance from the equator predict self-control? Lessons from the Human Penguin Project.

We comment on the proposition "that lower temperatures and especially greater seasonal variation in temperature call for individuals and societies to adopt … a greater degree of self-control" (Van Lange et al., sect. 3, para. 4) for which we cannot find empirical support in a large data set with data-driven analyses. After providing greater nuance in our theoretical review, we suggest that Van Lange et al. revisit their model with an eye toward the social determinants of self-control.

Reducing implicit racial preferences: II. Intervention effectiveness across time.

Implicit preferences are malleable, but does that change last? We tested 9 interventions (8 real and 1 sham) to reduce implicit racial preferences over time. In 2 studies with a total of 6,321 participants, all 9 interventions immediately reduced implicit preferences. However, none were effective after a delay of several hours to several days. We also found that these interventions did not change explicit racial preferences and were not reliably moderated by motivations to respond without prejudice. Short-term malleability in implicit preferences does not necessarily lead to long-term change, raising new questions about the flexibility and stability of implicit preferences. (PsycINFO Database Record

Disability and assistance dog implicit association test: a novel IAT.

OBJECTIVE: Individuals with disabilities often face stigma and negative social interactions. Human-animal interaction literature suggests that an individual paired with an animal will be perceived differently than an individual alone. Although people with disabilities report increases in social interactions when with assistance dogs, the reasons for this remain unclear. One possibility is that attitudes toward people with disabilities are altered by the presence of assistance dogs, thus affecting the social behaviors of the perceiver. This study examines whether implicit attitudes toward individuals with disabilities differ in the presence of an assistance dog. METHOD: College students (N = 244) completed the Attitudes of Adults to Dogs scale, an item assessing dog ownership, and the Disabilities and Assistance Dog Implicit Association Test (IAT). RESULTS: A 1-sample t test demonstrated a significant IAT effect, t(240) = 3.62, p < .001, with a positive implicit bias observed toward an individual with a disability when paired with an assistance dog over the individual alone. White individuals were more likely than Black individuals to hold positive implicit attitudes toward an individual with a disability paired with a dog, F(2, 238) = 3.18, p = .04. There were no significant differences in IAT D scores based on gender or dog ownership. IMPLICATIONS: This study extends previous research regarding social interactions for individuals with disabilities who are paired with assistance dogs. Increases in positive implicit attitudes toward an individual with a disability paired with a dog may explain these changes in social interactions. Dogs may serve as a social lubricant, increasing positive social interactions for individuals with disabilities.

Reducing implicit racial preferences: I. A comparative investigation of 17 interventions.

Many methods for reducing implicit prejudice have been identified, but little is known about their relative effectiveness. We held a research contest to experimentally compare interventions for reducing the expression of implicit racial prejudice. Teams submitted 17 interventions that were tested an average of 3.70 times each in 4 studies (total N = 17,021), with rules for revising interventions between studies. Eight of 17 interventions were effective at reducing implicit preferences for Whites compared with Blacks, particularly ones that provided experience with counterstereotypical exemplars, used evaluative conditioning methods, and provided strategies to override biases. The other 9 interventions were ineffective, particularly ones that engaged participants with others' perspectives, asked participants to consider egalitarian values, or induced a positive emotion. The most potent interventions were ones that invoked high self-involvement or linked Black people with positivity and White people with negativity. No intervention consistently reduced explicit racial preferences. Furthermore, intervention effectiveness only weakly extended to implicit preferences for Asians and Hispanics.

Do physicians' implicit views of African Americans affect clinical decision making?

BACKGROUND: Total knee replacement (TKR) is a cost-effective treatment option for severe osteoarthritis (OA). While prevalence of OA is higher among blacks than whites, TKR rates are lower among blacks. Physicians' implicit preferences might explain racial differences in TKR recommendation. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether the magnitude of implicit racial bias predicts physician recommendation of TKR for black and white patients with OA and to assess the effectiveness of a web-based instrument as an intervention to decrease the effect of implicit racial bias on physician recommendation of TKR. METHODS: In this web-based study, 543 family and internal medicine physicians were given a scenario describing either a black or white patient with severe OA refractory to medical treatment. Questionnaires evaluating the likelihood of recommending TKR, perceived medical cooperativeness, and measures of implicit racial bias were administered. The main outcome measures included TKR recommendation, implicit racial preference, and medical cooperativeness stereotypes measured with implicit association tests. RESULTS: Subjects displayed a strong implicit preference for whites over blacks (P < .0001) and associated "medically cooperative" with whites over blacks (P < .0001). Physicians reported significantly greater liking for whites over blacks (P < .0001) and reported believing whites were more medically cooperative than blacks (P < .0001). Participants reported providing similar care for white and black patients (P = .10) but agreed that subconscious biases could influence their treatment decisions (P < .0001). There was no significant difference in the rate of recommendation for TKR when the patient was black (47%) versus white (38%) (P = .439), and neither implicit nor explicit racial biases predicted differential treatment recommendations by race (all P > .06). Although participants were more likely to recommend TKR when completing the implicit association test before the decision, patient race was not significant in the association (P = .960). CONCLUSIONS: Physicians possessed explicit and implicit racial biases, but those biases did not predict treatment recommendations. Clinicians' biases about the medical cooperativeness of blacks versus whites, however, may have influenced treatment decisions.

Putting like a pro: the role of positive contagion in golf performance and perception.

Many amateur athletes believe that using a professional athlete's equipment can improve their performance. Such equipment can be said to be affected with positive contagion, which refers to the belief of transference of beneficial properties between animate persons/objects to previously neutral objects. In this experiment, positive contagion was induced by telling participants in one group that a putter previously belonged to a professional golfer. The effect of positive contagion was examined for perception and performance in a golf putting task. Individuals who believed they were using the professional golfer's putter perceived the size of the golf hole to be larger than golfers without such a belief and also had better performance, sinking more putts. These results provide empirical support for anecdotes, which allege that using objects with positive contagion can improve performance, and further suggest perception can be modulated by positive contagion.

Cumulative and career-stage citation impact of social-personality psychology programs and their members.

Number of citations and the h-index are popular metrics for indexing scientific impact. These, and other existing metrics, are strongly related to scientists' seniority. This article introduces complementary indicators that are unrelated to the number of years since PhD. To illustrate cumulative and career-stage approaches for assessing the scientific impact across a discipline, citations for 611 scientists from 97 U.S. and Canadian social psychology programs are amassed and analyzed. Results provide benchmarks for evaluating impact across the career span in psychology and other disciplines with similar citation patterns. Career-stage indicators provide a very different perspective on individual and program impact than cumulative impact, and may predict emerging scientists and programs. Comparing social groups, Whites and men had higher impact than non-Whites and women, respectively. However, average differences in career stage accounted for most of the difference for both groups.

Cognitive "Category-Based Induction" Research and Social "Persuasion" Research Are Each About What Makes Arguments Believable: A Tale of Two Literatures.

Social and cognitive psychologists each study factors that influence the believability of arguments, but they have worked mostly in parallel. We briefly examine and compare the dominant theories explaining argument believability in the social persuasion literature and the cognitive category-based induction literature. Although the two areas ask similar questions, they use different paradigms to study different aspects of the issues. We describe each area's major paradigms and questions and then examine the conclusions that each area draws regarding the role of five variables important to argument believability: (a) the number of sources/premises, (b) the similarity between sources/premises, (c) individual differences in characteristics of the reasoner, (d) the available resources, and (e) the reasoner's background knowledge and beliefs. Comparing the two literatures provides a more complete picture of the factors influencing argument believability and provides fruitful new avenues for integration and exploration.