Social threat indirectly increases moral condemnation via thwarting fundamental social needs.

Individuals who experience threats to their social needs may attempt to avert further harm by condemning wrongdoers more severely. Three pre-registered studies tested whether threatened social esteem is associated with increased moral condemnation. In Study 1 (N = 381) participants played a game in which they were socially included or excluded and then evaluated the actions of moral wrongdoers. We observed an indirect effect: Exclusion increased social needs-threat, which in turn increased moral condemnation. Study 2 (N = 428) was a direct replication, and also showed this indirect effect. Both studies demonstrated the effect across five moral foundations, and was most pronounced for harm violations. Study 3 (N = 102) examined dispositional concerns about social needs threat, namely social anxiety, and showed a positive correlation between this trait and moral judgments. Overall, results suggest threatened social standing is linked to moral condemnation, presumably because moral wrongdoers pose a further threat when one's ability to cope is already compromised.

Disease and Disapproval: COVID-19 Concern is Related to Greater Moral Condemnation.

Prior research has indicated that disease threat and disgust are associated with harsher moral condemnation. We investigated the role of a specific, highly salient health concern, namely the spread of the coronavirus, and associated COVID-19 disease, on moral disapproval. We hypothesized that individuals who report greater subjective worry about COVID-19 would be more sensitive to moral transgressions. Across three studies (N = 913), conducted March-May 2020 as the pandemic started to unfold in the United States, we found that individuals who were worried about contracting the infectious disease made harsher moral judgments than those who were relatively less worried. This effect was not restricted to transgressions involving purity, but extended to transgressions involving harm, fairness, authority, and loyalty, and remained when controlling for political orientation. Furthermore, for Studies 1 and 2 the effect also was robust when taking into account the contamination subscale of the Disgust Scale-Revised. These findings add to the growing literature that concrete threats to health can play a role in abstract moral considerations, supporting the notion that judgments of wrongdoing are not based on rational thought alone.

Quantifying the cost of decision fatigue: suboptimal risk decisions in finance.

Making decisions over extended periods of time is cognitively taxing and can lead to decision fatigue, which is linked to a preference for the 'default' option, namely whatever decision involves relatively little cognitive effort. Such effects have been demonstrated across a number of applied settings, including forensic and clinical contexts. Previous research, however, has not quantified the cost of such suboptimal decisions. We assessed the magnitude of the negative consequences of decision fatigue in the finance sector. Using 26 501 credit loan applications evaluated by credit officers of a major bank, we show that in this real-life financial risk-taking context credit loan approvals across the course of a day decreased during midday compared with early or later in the workday, reflecting a preference for the default option. To quantify the economic loss associated with such decision variability, we then modelled the bank's additional credit collection if all decisions had been made during early morning levels of approval. This would have resulted in $509 023 extra revenue for the bank, for one month. Thus, we provide further evidence that is consistent with a pattern of decision fatigue, and that it can have a substantial negative impact in the finance sector that warrants considerations to counteract it.

Cleansing and separation procedures reflect resource concerns.

We propose that procedures of separation have two functions, namely first, to establish the integrity of individual parts, and second, to make previously joint entities discreet and therefore countable. This allows taking stock of available resources, including evaluating the use of individual objects, a process that is especially adaptive under conditions of threat of contagious disease and resource scarcity.

Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behaviour with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.

Atoning Past Indulgences: Oral Consumption and Moral Compensation.

Previous research has shown that moral failures increase compensatory behaviors, such as prosociality and even self-punishment, because they are strategies to re-establish one's positive moral self-image. Do similar compensatory behaviors result from violations in normative eating practices? Three experiments explored the moral consequences of recalling instances of perceived excessive food consumption. In Experiment 1 we showed that women recalling an overeating (vs. neutral) experience reported more guilt and a desire to engage in prosocial behavior in the form of so-called self-sacrificing. In Experimental 2 this logic was applied to actual spontaneous helping behaviors toward an experimenter, with participants who recalled an overeating (vs. neutral) experience exhibiting more such helping in the laboratory. Experimental 3 expanded the investigation to self-inflicted pain: overeating (vs. neutral) recall led to higher levels of self-punishment as indicted by longer time periods spent engaging in the cold pressor task. In sum, failures in normative food consumption can be viewed as moral transgressions that elicits both interpersonal and intrapersonal compensatory behaviors aimed at restoring a positive moral self-image.

The role of oxytocin in the facial mimicry of affiliative vs. non-affiliative emotions.

The present paper builds upon a growing body of work documenting oxytocin's role in social functioning, to test whether this hormone facilitates spontaneous mimicry of others' emotional expressions. In a double-blind, randomized trial, adult Caucasian males (n = 145) received a nasal spray of either oxytocin or placebo before completing a facial mimicry task. Facial expressions were coded using automated face analysis. Oxytocin increased mimicry of facial features of sadness (lips and chin, but not areas around the eyes), an affiliative reaction that facilitates social bonding. Oxytocin also increased mimicry of happiness, but only for individuals who expressed low levels of happiness in response to neutral faces. Overall, participants did not reliably mimic expressions of fear and anger, echoing recent theoretical accounts of emotional mimicry as dependent on the social context. In sum, our findings suggest that oxytocin facilitates emotional mimicry in ways that are conducive to affiliation, pointing to a possible pathway through which oxytocin promotes social bonding.

The Color Red Is Implicitly Associated With Social Status in the United Kingdom and China.

Research and theorizing on human societies have shown that the color red plays a large role in human psychological functioning. The aim of the present study was to test the association between red and high-status symbols across cultural contexts. Using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) paradigm, across seven experiments (N = 357), we demonstrated that participants exhibited a faster association of red color and logos of high-status stimuli compared to red color and logos of low-status stimuli. The effect was shown among both males and females, with two different types of status symbols (car logos and university logos), and with four different contrast colors (white, gray, green, blue). Moreover, this association was observed in both United Kingdom and China. These findings provide compelling evidence for the implicit association between the color red and high social status across two different cultural contexts.

Looking up to virtue: averting gaze facilitates moral construals via posteromedial activations.

Witnessing exemplary actions triggers admiration, a positive emotion that can pertain to concrete skills, or move the onlooker beyond physical characteristics to appreciate the abstract, moral implications. Participants reacted to narratives depicting skilled or virtuous protagonists first during a videotaped interview then during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We analyzed participants' gaze aversion (an indicator of disengaging from the immediate environment) and cognitive construals (mentions of concrete characteristics vs abstract beliefs and values) during the interview, and relations to individuals' subsequent neural activations. When participants averted their gaze, they were more likely to mention abstract construals, and both behaviors were more likely when reacting to virtue. Gaze aversion to virtue narratives predicted greater subsequent activation for those narratives in dorsal posterior cingulate cortex (dPCC), involved in visual attention control. The inferior-posterior posteromedial cortices (ipPMC), a default mode network hub involved in abstract thought, activated only to virtue, and activity level reflected individuals' tendency to abstract construals. Critically, dPCC and ipPMC activity sequentially mediated the relationship between individuals' gaze and abstract construal tendencies. No such relationships existed for reactions to skill, despite participants reporting equivalently strong positive emotion. In appreciating virtue, dPCC may support individuals in transcending the viewable context, facilitating ipPMC activity and moral construals.

Close or far? Affect explains conflicting findings on motivated distance perception to rewards.

Research on motivated perception has yielded conflicting findings: Whereas Balcetis and Dunning (2010) showed that people approaching (vs. avoiding) rewarding objects (e.g. food) see them as closer, Krpan and Schnall (2014a) found the opposite. Furthermore, whereas Balcetis (2016) suggested that people who perceive rewarding objects as closer (vs. farther) should subsequently consume more, Krpan and Schnall (2017) showed that they actually ate less. We introduce affect as the missing link to explain these conflicting findings. Two experiments showed that approach and avoidance can either involve, or lack, an affective experience, which in turn determines how they influence perception, and how perception is related to behavior. Consistent with Krpan and Schnall (2017), non-affective approach (vs. avoidance) motivation made candies look farther; seeing candies as farther in turn predicted increased consumption (Experiment 1). In contrast, consistent with Balcetis and Dunning (2010), affective approach (vs. avoidance) motivation made these stimuli look closer; seeing candies as closer was associated with more being eaten (Experiment 2). Our findings therefore reconcile previous inconsistencies on motivated perception, and suggest that people's view of their surroundings is more dynamic than previously assumed.

The paradox of moral cleansing: When physical cleansing leads to increased contamination concerns.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Moral threats, including threats to moral self-worth, have been associated with contamination concerns. Paradoxically, although self-cleansing provides temporary relief, it can worsen feelings of contamination. Self-affirmation might be an effective strategy, especially following obsessive type cognitions (e.g., responsibility beliefs) when moral threats are reactivated. METHODS: In Experiment 1, participants recalled an immoral deed and then self-cleansed (using a hand-wipe), completed a control task, or self-affirmed. Contamination concerns were subsequently measured by a washing task. In Experiment 2, the same procedure was used but obsessive-type cognitions were activated by asking participants a series of questions about obsessive beliefs. RESULTS: As expected, relative to the control condition, both self-affirmation and self-cleansing resulted in less subsequent repeated washing behaviour in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, when the immoral recall was followed by activation of obsessive-type cognitions, self-cleansing led to more guilt and repeated washing than self-affirmation and control. Rather than alleviating feelings of contamination, physical self-cleansing led to more contamination concerns and guilt when in the context of activated obsessive-type cognitions, possibly because it paradoxically makes (moral) cleanliness goals salient. LIMITATIONS: Future research needs to test clinical populations, for whom contamination concerns are all the more central. CONCLUSIONS: This research provides further evidence of the influence of moral threat in contamination concerns, and the limits of moral cleansing. Self-affirmation resulted in less contamination concerns under both a neutral condition and activated obsessive type cognitions.

Spatial Learning and Wayfinding in an Immersive Environment: The Digital Fulldome.

Previous work has examined whether immersive technologies can benefit learning in virtual environments, but the potential benefits of technology in this context are confounded by individual differences such as spatial ability. We assessed spatial knowledge acquisition in male and female participants using a technology not previously examined empirically: the digital fulldome. Our primary aim was to examine whether performance on a test of survey knowledge was better in a fulldome (N = 28, 12 males) relative to a large, flat screen display (N = 27, 13 males). Regression analysis showed that, compared to a flat screen display, males showed higher levels of performance on a test of survey knowledge after learning in the fulldome, but no benefit occurred for females. Furthermore, performance correlated with spatial visualization ability in male participants, but not in female participants. Thus, the digital fulldome is a potentially useful learning aid, capable of accommodating multiple users, but individual differences and use of strategy need to be considered.

Social and Contextual Constraints on Embodied Perception.

A number of papers have challenged research on physiological and psychological influences on perception by claiming to show that such findings can be explained by nonperceptual factors such as demand characteristics. Relatedly, calls for separating perception from judgment have been issued. However, such efforts fail to consider key processes known to shape judgment processes: people's inability to report accurately on their judgments, conversational dynamics of experimental research contexts, and misattribution and discounting processes. Indeed, the fact that initially observed effects of embodied influences disappear is predicted by an extensive amount of literature on judgments studied within social psychology. Thus, findings from such studies suggest that the initially presumed underlying processes are at work-namely, functional considerations that are informative in the context of preparing the body for action. In this article, I provide suggestions on how to conduct research on perception within the social constraints of experimental contexts.

A dual systems account of visual perception: Predicting candy consumption from distance estimates.

A substantial amount of evidence shows that visual perception is influenced by forces that control human actions, ranging from motivation to physiological potential. However, studies have not yet provided convincing evidence that perception itself is directly involved in everyday behaviors such as eating. We suggest that this issue can be resolved by employing the dual systems account of human behavior. We tested the link between perceived distance to candies and their consumption for participants who were tired or depleted (impulsive system), versus those who were not (reflective system). Perception predicted eating only when participants were tired (Experiment 1) or depleted (Experiments 2 and 3). In contrast, a rational determinant of behavior-eating restraint towards candies-predicted eating for non-depleted individuals (Experiment 2). Finally, Experiment 3 established that perceived distance was correlated with participants' self-reported motivation to consume candies. Overall, these findings suggest that the dynamics between perception and behavior depend on the interplay of the two behavioral systems.

Too close for comfort: Stimulus valence moderates the influence of motivational orientation on distance perception.

The relationship between approach and avoidance motivational orientations and valenced stimuli has previously been discussed in relation to physical distance. However, it has remained unclear whether approach and avoidance can actually change how people perceive the physical distance to valenced stimuli. Drawing on research on motivational orientation and valence as well as the motivated perception account, we predicted that valenced stimuli incompatible with motivational orientation would be perceived as closer than compatible stimuli because they motivate the goal of resolving the inconsistency arising from discrepant affective information. This prediction was supported in a series of 4 experiments. Findings were consistent across different manipulations of motivational orientation, including motor movements (Experiments 1 and 2) and cognitive procedures (Experiments 3 and 4), and across different types of stimuli, including abstract words (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and photos of concrete objects (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 further investigated the mechanism behind the influence of incompatibility versus compatibility between motivational orientation and valence on distance perception. The findings showed that, relative to compatibility, incompatibility resulted in participants solving more anagrams, presumably because the goal-related motivational state gave rise to a general state of activation. Furthermore, perceptual estimates were correlated with the activity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and the activity of the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) relative to the BIS, further suggesting that goal-related motivation may be associated with perception. Overall, the present research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that visual perception is shaped by motivational considerations.

The influence of social power on weight perception.

Three studies explored whether social power affects the perception of physical properties of objects, testing the hypothesis that the powerless find objects to be heavier than the powerful do. Correlational findings from Study 1 revealed that people with a low personal sense of power perceived loaded boxes to be heavier than people with a high personal sense of power perceived them to be. In Study 2, experimentally manipulated power indicated that participants in the powerless condition judged the boxes to be heavier than did participants in the powerful condition. Study 3 further indicated that lacking power actively influences weight perception relative to a neutral control condition, whereas having power does not. Although much research on embodied perception has shown that various physiological and psychosocial resources influence visual perception of the physical environment, this is the first demonstration suggesting that power, a psychosocial construct that relates to the control of resources, changes the perception of physical properties of objects.

Overweight people have low levels of implicit weight bias, but overweight nations have high levels of implicit weight bias.

Although a greater degree of personal obesity is associated with weaker negativity toward overweight people on both explicit (i.e., self-report) and implicit (i.e., indirect behavioral) measures, overweight people still prefer thin people on average. We investigated whether the national and cultural context - particularly the national prevalence of obesity - predicts attitudes toward overweight people independent of personal identity and weight status. Data were collected from a total sample of 338,121 citizens from 71 nations in 22 different languages on the Project Implicit website (https://implicit.harvard.edu/) between May 2006 and October 2010. We investigated the relationship of the explicit and implicit weight bias with the obesity both at the individual (i.e., across individuals) and national (i.e., across nations) level. Explicit weight bias was assessed with self-reported preference between overweight and thin people; implicit weight bias was measured with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The national estimates of explicit and implicit weight bias were obtained by averaging the individual scores for each nation. Obesity at the individual level was defined as Body Mass Index (BMI) scores, whereas obesity at the national level was defined as three national weight indicators (national BMI, national percentage of overweight and underweight people) obtained from publicly available databases. Across individuals, greater degree of obesity was associated with weaker implicit negativity toward overweight people compared to thin people. Across nations, in contrast, a greater degree of national obesity was associated with stronger implicit negativity toward overweight people compared to thin people. This result indicates a different relationship between obesity and implicit weight bias at the individual and national levels.

Similar psychological distance reduces temporal discounting.

People often prefer inferior options in the present even when options in the future are more lucrative. Five studies investigated whether decision making could be improved by manipulating construal level and psychological distance. In Studies 1a, 1b, and 2, temporal discounting was reduced when future rewards (trips to Paris) were construed at a relatively concrete level, thus inducing a similar level of construal to present rewards. By contrast, Studies 3 and 4 reduced temporal discounting by making present financial rewards more psychologically distant via a social proximity manipulation, and thus linked to a similar high level of construal as future rewards. These results suggest that people prefer the more lucrative option when comparing two intertemporal choices that are construed on a similar level instead of on a different level. Thus, changes in construal level and mental representations can be used to promote more desirable choices in economic decision making.