The Psychological Science Accelerator's COVID-19 rapid-response dataset.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data.

Contextual factors predicting compliance behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: A machine learning analysis on survey data from 16 countries.

Voluntary isolation is one of the most effective methods for individuals to help prevent the transmission of diseases such as COVID-19. Understanding why people leave their homes when advised not to do so and identifying what contextual factors predict this non-compliant behavior is essential for policymakers and public health officials. To provide insight on these factors, we collected data from 42,169 individuals across 16 countries. Participants responded to items inquiring about their socio-cultural environment, such as the adherence of fellow citizens, as well as their mental states, such as their level of loneliness and boredom. We trained random forest models to predict whether someone had left their home during a one week period during which they were asked to voluntarily isolate themselves. The analyses indicated that overall, an increase in the feeling of being caged leads to an increased probability of leaving home. In addition, an increased feeling of responsibility and an increased fear of getting infected decreased the probability of leaving home. The models predicted compliance behavior with between 54% and 91% accuracy within each country's sample. In addition, we modeled factors leading to risky behavior in the pandemic context. We observed an increased probability of visiting risky places as both the anticipated number of people and the importance of the activity increased. Conversely, the probability of visiting risky places increased as the perceived putative effectiveness of social distancing decreased. The variance explained in our models predicting risk ranged from < .01 to .54 by country. Together, our findings can inform behavioral interventions to increase adherence to lockdown recommendations in pandemic conditions.

IDEST: International Database of Emotional Short Texts.

We introduce a database (IDEST) of 250 short stories rated for valence, arousal, and comprehensibility in two languages. The texts, with a narrative structure telling a story in the first person and controlled for length, were originally written in six different languages (Finnish, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish), and rated for arousal, valence, and comprehensibility in the original language. The stories were translated into English, and the same ratings for the English translations were collected via an internet survey tool (N = 573). In addition to the rating data, we also report readability indexes for the original and English texts. The texts have been categorized into different story types based on their emotional arc. The texts score high on comprehensibility and represent a wide range of emotional valence and arousal levels. The comparative analysis of the ratings of the original texts and English translations showed that valence ratings were very similar across languages, whereas correlations between the two pairs of language versions for arousal and comprehensibility were modest. Comprehensibility ratings correlated with only some of the readability indexes. The database is published in osf.io/9tga3, and it is freely available for academic research.

A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration.

Following theories of emotional embodiment, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that individuals' subjective experiences of emotion are influenced by their facial expressions. However, evidence for this hypothesis has been mixed. We thus formed a global adversarial collaboration and carried out a preregistered, multicentre study designed to specify and test the conditions that should most reliably produce facial feedback effects. Data from n = 3,878 participants spanning 19 countries indicated that a facial mimicry and voluntary facial action task could both amplify and initiate feelings of happiness. However, evidence of facial feedback effects was less conclusive when facial feedback was manipulated unobtrusively via a pen-in-mouth task.

Influence of Resilience and Optimism on Distress and Intention to Self-Isolate: Contrasting Lower and Higher COVID-19 Illness Risk Samples From an Extended Health Belief Model.

The study investigated the influence of resilience and dispositional optimism on, first, emotional distress and, second, the intention to self-isolate, experienced by people with a lower and higher illness risk, during the lockdown imposed in Spain during the first COVID-19 wave. These effects were investigated against the background of the Health Belief Model (HBM). A convenience sample of N = 325 participants completed an online survey including an ad-hoc questionnaire measuring the HBM core factors: Perceived health threat (susceptibility and severity of getting infected), and perceived quarantine benefits and costs. Self-efficacy and perceived social pressure were also measured. Based on reviews regarding pandemic outbreaks, quarantine benefits were conceptualized as the perceived effectiveness and solidary contribution of self-isolating in line with the quarantine protocols. Quarantine "psychosocial" costs were conceptualized as a composite of perceived boredom, loneliness, and economic concerns. Findings revealed an asymmetrical pattern of results so that (i) people at higher risk were more distressed by the perceived severity of getting infected whereas people at lower risk were more distressed by the psychosocial costs. Moreover, (ii) resilience and optimism were more "protective" against distress within the lower and higher risk groups, respectively. In addition, (iii) quarantine benefits and self-efficacy promoted the intention to self-isolate within both groups. However, (iv) optimism hindered such intention. This finding is discussed in the light of links between dispositional optimism and optimistic bias; the underestimation of experiencing negative events, which can relax the perceived health risk. Based on these findings, communication campaigns should prioritize information about the effectiveness of the implemented preventive behaviors rather than the costs of not implementing them, and be cautionary in encouraging excessive optimism.

Altering emotions near the hand: Approach-avoidance swipe interactions modulate the perceived valence of emotional pictures.

Approaching positive objects and avoiding negative ones are general action tendencies in human behavior. Interestingly, hand or arm positions connoting approach (arm flexion) or avoidance (arm extension) have also been shown to influence how the valence of a stimulus is evaluated. However, this causal effect on valence evaluation has been typically examined within experimental paradigms that do not require acting upon objects such as when touching or moving them. Accordingly, the current study attempts to integrate approach-avoidance paradigms with findings suggesting that manipulating visual stimuli directly by hand modulates their cognitive processing. Sixty participants evaluated the valence of 40 emotional pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) twice, first after watching them on a monitor (i.e., baseline evaluations) and second after swiping them on a touchscreen, either toward or away from their body (i.e., interactions regulating distance). Our findings confirmed that, in contrast to just watching the pictures, (a) swiping positive pictures closer and negative pictures away led to positively change their valence evaluation (i.e., reinforcing the perceived valence of positive pictures and attenuating the perceived valence of negative pictures). However, (b) swiping negative pictures closer and positive pictures away barely changed their initial valence evaluation. Against this background, we argue that swiping emotional pictures closer or away directly by hand, may intensify the attentional prioritization to interactions leading to more desirable consequences, namely, approaching positive and avoiding negative stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

How People Evaluate Anti-Corona Measures for Their Social Spheres: Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control.

Restrictions on outdoor activities, tips for hygiene, and tips for mental health are among the most common initiatives to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures aim to protect people's health and, at the same time, impact their social lives. So far, it is little known how people evaluate those anti-Corona measures with regard to their social spheres (close family, wider family and friends, colleagues, and society). Furthermore, it is plausible that the subjective evaluation of attitudinal objects and especially severe events, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the related counter-measures, is multidimensional. Against this background, we combine the social spheres with the elements of the Theory of Planned Behavior. On the methodological basis of the Means-End Theory of Complex Cognitive Structures, we determine the perceived relevance and quality of the attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and social spheres regarding anti-Corona measures. Furthermore, the applied methodology allows the deduction of norm strategies to define the priority of securing or increasing the effectiveness of elements of anti-Corona measures. Based on the answers of 663 participants, we found that the protection from COVID-19 and its consequences (attitude) are more important to people than the practicability of anti-Corona measures in their social lives (perceived behavioral control), which, again, has a higher subjective relevance than the willingness to fulfill the expectations of others (subjective norm). Additionally, people distinguish between their close family (higher subjective relevance) and their other social spheres (lower subjective relevance). The people attribute the highest quality to the tips on hygiene, followed by the restrictions on outdoor activities and the tips for mental health. The protection and practicability of the anti-Corona measures have higher quality ratings than the willingness to fulfill the expectations of others. Based on the norm strategies, policymakers should secure the effectiveness of the current anti-Corona measures with a high priority by focusing on the protection and practicability with regard to close and wider family and friends. Increasing the effectiveness of the protection and practicability of anti-Corona measures in work and society also has a high priority. Focusing on the subjective norm should be of lower priority.

Coding valence in touchscreen interactions: hand dominance and lateral movement influence valence appraisals of emotional pictures.

The Body-Specificity Hypothesis postulates that the space surrounding the dominant hand is perceived as positive due to the motor fluency of this hand, whereas the space surrounding the non-dominant hand is perceived as negative. Experimental studies based on this theoretical framework also revealed associations between affective valence and hand dominance (i.e., dominant hand-positive; non-dominant hand-negative), or lateral movements of the hands (i.e., right hand toward the right space-positive; left hand toward the left space-positive). Interestingly, these associations have not been examined with regard to how lateral actions of the hands may influence affective experiences as, for example, in valence appraisals of affective objects that have been manipulated. The study presented here has considered this question in light of the emerging interest of embodied cognition approaches to interactive technologies, particularly in affective experiences with touchscreen interfaces. Accordingly, right-handed participants evaluated the valence of positive and negative emotional pictures after interacting with them either with the dominant right or with the non-dominant left hand. Specifically, they moved the pictures either from left to right or from right to left sides of a touchscreen monitor. The results indicated that a valence matching between the hand used for the interactions, the picture's valence category, and the movement's starting side reinforced the valence appraisals of the pictures (i.e., positive/negative pictures were more positively/negatively evaluated). The findings are discussed against the background of the Theory of Event Coding, which accounts for both the affective properties of the stimuli and the affective connotation of the related action.

Valence-space associations in touchscreen interactions: Valence match between emotional pictures and their vertical touch location leads to pictures' positive evaluation.

Embodied cognition research suggests that bodily experiences might ground mental representations of emotional valence in the vertical dimension of space (i.e., positive is up and negative is down). Accordingly, recent studies show that upward and downward arm movements may also influence the evaluation of valence-laden stimuli, suggesting that upward (downwards) movements lead to more positive (negative) evaluations. Interestingly, these studies typically did not investigate paradigms that require a direct hand interaction with the stimuli. With the advent of touchscreen devices and their use for experimental environments, however, a direct and more natural hand interaction with the stimuli has come to the fore. In this regard, the goal of the present study is to examine how direct hand interaction with valence-laden stimuli on a touchscreen monitor affects their perceived valence. To do so, participants evaluated emotional pictures after touching and moving them either upwards or downwards across a vertically mounted touchscreen. In contrast to previous findings, the results suggest that positive pictures were evaluated as more positive after downward movements while negative pictures were evaluated as less negative following upward movements. This finding may indicate that a matching between the pictures' valence and the valence associated with their vertical touch location leads to more positive evaluations. Thus, the present study extends earlier results by an important point: Touching the emotional pictures during movement may influence their valence processing.

Manipulating the Alpha Level Cannot Cure Significance Testing.

We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = 0.05 to p = 0.005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense with significance testing altogether. There are alternatives that address study design and sample size much more directly than significance testing does; but none of the statistical tools should be taken as the new magic method giving clear-cut mechanical answers. Inference should not be based on single studies at all, but on cumulative evidence from multiple independent studies. When evaluating the strength of the evidence, we should consider, for example, auxiliary assumptions, the strength of the experimental design, and implications for applications. To boil all this down to a binary decision based on a p-value threshold of 0.05, 0.01, 0.005, or anything else, is not acceptable.

Magnitude or Multitude - What Counts?

Recent studies revealed an association of low or high numbers (e.g., 1 vs. 9) and word semantics referring to entities typically found in upper or lower space (e.g., roof vs. root) indicating overlapping spatial representations. Another line of research revealed a similar association of grammatical number as a syntactic aspect of language and physical space: singular words were associated with left and plural words with right - resembling spatial-numerical associations of low numbers with left and high numbers with right. The present study aimed at integrating these lines of research by evaluating both types of spatial relations in one experiment. In a lexical decision task, pairs of a numerical cue and a subsequent plural noun were presented. For word with spatial associations (e.g., roofs vs. roots) number magnitude was expected to serve as a spatial cue. For spatially neutral words (e.g., tables) numbers were expected to cue multitude. Results showed the expected congruency-effect between the numbers and words with spatial associations (i.e., small numbers facilitate responses to down-words and high numbers to up-words). However, no effect was found for numbers and spatially neutral words. This seems to indicate that spatial aspects of word meaning may be related more closely to the magnitude of numbers than grammatical number is to the multitude reflected by numbers - at least in the current experimental setting, where only plural words were presented.

Does Grammatical Number Influence the Semantic Priming Between Number Cues and Words Related to Vertical Space? An Investigation Using Virtual Reality.

The GES framework postulates a hierarchical order between grounded, embodied, and situated representations. Against this background, the present study investigated the relation of two effects: (i) a semantic priming between number cues and words with referents up or down in the world according to the number's magnitude which is supposed to be grounded (cf. Lachmair et al., 2014) and (ii) the compatibility between number cues and the grammatical word form of the words according to the number's multitude which is supposed to be embodied (cf. Roettger and Domahs, 2015). In two experiments words referring to objects up or down in the world and spatially neutral words were presented subsequent to the numbers "1" and "9." In Experiment 1 words were presented in singular word form and in Experiment 2 in plural word form. For the first time, Virtual Reality was used in such an experimental setup in order to reduce spatial predispositions of participants and to provide a homogeneous experimental environment for replication purposes. According to GES it was expected that the spatial semantic priming should occur in both grammatical word forms. However, the compatibility with grammatical number should only occur for the plural word form due to its markedness. The results of Experiment 1 support the spatial-semantic-priming-hypothesis but not the grammatical-number-hypothesis. The results of Experiment 2 supported only the grammatical-number-hypothesis. It is argued that the grounded spatial effect of Experiment 1 was not affected by grammatical number. However, in Experiment 2 this effect vanished due to an activated embodied reference frame according to grammatical number.

Placing joy, surprise and sadness in space: a cross-linguistic study.

The valence-space metaphor posits that emotion concepts map onto vertical space such that positive concepts are in upper locations and negative in lower locations. Whilst previous studies have demonstrated this pattern for positive and negative emotions e.g. 'joy' and 'sadness', the spatial location of neutral emotions, e.g. 'surprise', has not been investigated, and little is known about the effect of linguistic background. In this study, we first characterised the emotions joy, surprise and sadness via ratings of their concreteness, imageability, context availability and valence before examining the allocation of these emotions in vertical space. Participants from six linguistic groups completed either a rating task used to characterise the emotions or a word allocation task to implicitly assess where these emotions are positioned in vertical space. Our findings suggest that, across languages, gender, handedness, and ages, positive emotions are located in upper spatial locations and negative emotions in lower spatial locations. In addition, we found that the neutral emotional valence of surprise is reflected in this emotion being mapped mid-way between upper and lower locations onto the vertical plane. This novel finding indicates that the location of a concept on the vertical plane mimics the concept's degree of emotional valence.

How Body Orientation Affects Concepts of Space, Time and Valence: Functional Relevance of Integrating Sensorimotor Experiences during Word Processing.

The aim of the present study was to test the functional relevance of the spatial concepts UP or DOWN for words that use these concepts either literally (space) or metaphorically (time, valence). A functional relevance would imply a symmetrical relationship between the spatial concepts and words related to these concepts, showing that processing words activate the related spatial concepts on one hand, but also that an activation of the concepts will ease the retrieval of a related word on the other. For the latter, the rotation angle of participant's body position was manipulated either to an upright or a head-down tilted body position to activate the related spatial concept. Afterwards participants produced in a within-subject design previously memorized words of the concepts space, time and valence according to the pace of a metronome. All words were related either to the spatial concept UP or DOWN. The results including Bayesian analyses show (1) a significant interaction between body position and words using the concepts UP and DOWN literally, (2) a marginal significant interaction between body position and temporal words and (3) no effect between body position and valence words. However, post-hoc analyses suggest no difference between experiments. Thus, the authors concluded that integrating sensorimotor experiences is indeed of functional relevance for all three concepts of space, time and valence. However, the strength of this functional relevance depends on how close words are linked to mental concepts representing vertical space.

Priming effects between spatial meaning of verbs and numbers are modulated by time intervals: Early interference and late facilitation.

In 2 recent studies it has been shown that processing high or low number primes (8, 9 vs. 1, 2) affect the processing of subsequent target words with an implicit spatial cue up or down (e.g., sky, to rise vs. floor, to fall) (Lachmair, Dudschig, de la Vega, & Kaup, 2014a; Lachmair, Dudschig, Ruiz Fernández, & Kaup, 2014b). It has been argued that the interactions for number-noun and number-verb pairs are due to overlapping representations of numbers and words. If this is true, one should find similar interactions by using words as primes and numbers as targets (neuronal-overlap-of-meaning hypothesis). It has also been argued that the reversed interaction for number-verb pairs as shown in Lachmair et al. (2014b) might be due to a dynamic simulation of the associated motion (dynamic-spatial-grounding hypothesis). This was tested by using 3 different time intervals for target presentation. The results show first that the neuronal-overlap-of-meaning hypothesis was only supported for verb-number pairs (Experiment 1), not for noun-number pairs (Experiment 2). Second, the dynamic-spatial-grounding hypothesis was supported by the results for verb-number pairs as expected. This suggests that neuronal representations of numbers and verbs share common spatial meaning attributes. Moreover, the results suggest that the meaning of verbs with implicit directional cue up or down is dynamically simulated according to the course of their movement. (PsycINFO Database Record

Overt head movements moderate the effect of depressive symptoms on mood regulation.

A dysfunction in the regulation of negative mood states is one of the core symptoms of depression. Research has found that levels of depression are associated with the intensity of the mood-regulation deficit. The present study aimed to explore the role the body plays in mood-regulation processes. More specifically, we studied whether head movements can influence mood persistence in dysphoric states. Subsequent to a sad-mood induction, participants were presented with a set of positive pictures immediately after performing either vertical (i.e., nodding) or lateral (i.e., shaking) head movements. We considered changes in mood from before to after the experimental task as an index of the effectiveness of mood regulation. As expected, the results showed that higher initial levels of depressive symptoms were associated with greater persistence of sad mood. More importantly, this association was present in participants who shook their heads, but not in those who nodded. These results show that body movements can contribute to mood-regulation processes, thus expanding our knowledge of the psychopathology of mood disorders.

Processing order in dual-tasks when the duration of motor responses varies / Orden de ejecución de dos tareas cuando la duración de las respuestas motoras varían

Recent studies reported that central processing duration influences processing order of two tasks in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. This study examined whether the duration of response execution influences the processing of task order. For this purpose, a tone discrimination task was combined with a letter discrimination task. Both tasks were presented in random order using different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). In one condition, participants responded to each stimulus with a single key press (easy response condition). In the other condition, the tone task required a single key press, whereas the letter task required a more time-consuming key press-sequence (hard response condition). The results showed that participants tend to perform the tone task first more often when the response requirement for the letter task is hard, rather than easy. This result is consistent with the notion that participants optimize response scheduling in dual-task situations.

Bajo el paradigma de periodo refractario psicológico (PRP), recientes estudios han hallado que la duración del procesamiento central influye en el orden en el que dos tareas son procesadas. En el presente trabajo se examinó si la duración de la respuesta también influye en el orden en el que dos tareas se ejecutan. Para este propósito, se utilizó una tarea de discriminación auditiva en combinación con una tarea de discriminación visual. En el experimento se varió el orden de presentación de las tareas de forma aleatoria así como se utilizaron diferentes intervalos entre estímulos (stimulus onset asynchrony; SOA) En una condición, los participantes respondieron a cada estímulo pulsando una tecla (condición de respuesta simple). En la otra condición, mientras que a la tarea auditiva se respondía de nuevo pulsando una tecla, la respuesta a la tarea visual requería pulsar una secuencia de teclas, aumentando la duración de la respuesta (condición de respuesta compleja). Los resultados mostraron que los participantes tienden a ejecutar más a menudo la tarea auditiva en primer lugar cuando la respuesta de la tarea visual es más compleja. Este resultado apoya la noción de que, en escenarios de doble tarea, los participantes pueden invertir sus respuestas si con ello optimizan su ejecución.

With the past behind and the future ahead: back-to-front representation of past and future sentences.

Several studies support the psychological reality of a mental timeline that runs from the left to the right and may strongly affect our thinking about time. Ulrich and Maienborn (Cognition 117:126-138, 2010) examined the linguistic relevance of this timeline during the processing of past- and future-related sentences. Their results indicate that the timeline is not activated automatically during sentence comprehension. While no explicit reference of temporal expressions to the left-right axis has been attested (e.g., *the meeting was moved to the left), natural languages refer to the back-front axis in order to encode temporal information (e.g., the meeting was moved forward). Therefore, the present study examines whether a back-frontal timeline becomes automatically activated during the processing of past- and future-related sentences. The results demonstrate a clear effect on reaction time that emerges from a time-space association along the frontal timeline (Experiment 1). However, this activation seems to be nonautomatic (Experiment 2), rendering it unlikely that this frontal timeline is involved in comprehension of the temporal content of sentences.

Processing two tasks with varying task order: central stage duration influences central processing order.

In a recent study, Sigman and Dehaene (2006, PLoS Biology, 4, 1227-1238) reported that perceptual processing duration influences processing order of two tasks in the psychological refractory period paradigm (PRP). The present study examines whether the duration of central processes also influences processing order. For this purpose, we employed letter tasks with different central processing durations and varied task order in the PRP. In one part of the experiment, a tone discrimination task was combined with a similar time-consuming letter discrimination task. In the other part, the tone task was combined with a more time-consuming letter task, which required a mental rotation of the letter thereby prolonging central processing. If the duration of central processes influences processing order, participants should perform the tone task first more often when it is presented with the more time-consuming mental rotation task, than when it is presented with the similar time-consuming letter task. The results clearly confirm this prediction and thus show that not only perceptual processing duration but also central processing duration affects processing order in a dual-task situation. We suggest that the reported effect mirrors a tendency of participants to minimize total reaction time to both tasks by reducing slack time.

Number magnitude determines gaze direction: Spatial-numerical association in a free-choice task.

Since Dehaene et al. (1993) reported the SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect, researchers have repeatedly documented an influence of number magnitude on reaction time in various motor tasks. In addition, thinking about numbers induces shifts of visuo-spatial attention (Fischer et al., 2003). The present study examined whether number magnitude affects a person's eye movement in a free-choice task. After the presentation of a number in the middle of the screen, two pictures of human faces were simultaneously presented on either side of the screen. Participants were asked to explore the screen after the presentation of a number. Analyses performed on first eye fixations confirmed that number magnitude affects gaze direction in this free-choice task. The present study shows that the influence of number magnitude on visuo-spatial attention affects the choice of where to look first.