Feeling Closer to the Future Self and Doing Better: Temporal Psychological Mechanisms Underlying Academic Performance.

This research examined the function of future self-continuity and its potential downstream consequences for academic performance through relations with other temporal psychological factors and self-control. We also addressed the influence of cultural factors by testing whether these relations differed by college generation status. Undergraduate students enrolled at a large public university participated in two studies (Study 1: N = 119, Mage = 20.55, 56.4% women; Study 2: N = 403, Mage = 19.83, 58.3% women) in which they completed measures of temporal psychological factors and psychological resources. In Study 2, we also obtained academic records to link responses to academic performance. Future self-continuity predicted subsequent academic performance and was related positively to future focus, negatively to present focus, and positively to self-control. Additionally, the relation between future focus and self-control was stronger for continuing-generation college students than first-generation college students. Future self-continuity plays a pivotal role in academic contexts. Findings suggest that it may have positive downstream consequences on academic achievement by directing attention away from the present and toward the future, which promotes self-control. Further, the strategy of focusing on the future may be effective in promoting self-control only for certain cultural groups.

Culture and risk assessments: Why Latino Americans perceive greater risk for diabetes.

OBJECTIVE: Large ethnic disparities exist in health outcomes, yet little is known about the psychological mechanisms that underlie these differences. We propose that a key to understanding ethnic minority health is to recognize the cultural factors that influence perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD), specifically ethnicity and ethnic identification. In 3 studies, we examined how these cultural factors were associated with PVD to Type II diabetes, a highly prevalent disease among Latino Americans. We had 3 specific aims. The first was to examine ethnic group differences in PVD between European Americans and Latino Americans. The second was to examine potential psychological mechanisms that account for ethnic differences in PVD. The third was to examine the relationship between ethnic identification and PVD among Latino Americans. METHOD: Participants in all studies were young European American and Latino American adults and were from independent samples. In all 3 studies, participants completed the questionnaires online. RESULTS: Study 1 found that Latino Americans as compared with European Americans have higher PVD to diabetes. Study 2 showed that perceived similarity to the typical person who gets diabetes and the number of reported family members with diabetes predicted the degree of PVD to diabetes. However, we found that the nature of the associations between these mechanisms and perceived risk differed by ethnic group. Study 3 examined what may be influencing perceived similarity for Latino Americans; we found ethnic identification is a significant factor. DISCUSSION: Together, the present findings have broad implications for diabetes communication, education, and health campaigns.

How group processes influence, maintain, and overcome health disparities.

This special issue of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations presents new theory and research on how group processes influence, maintain, and overcome health disparities. We present eight papers that document the causes and consequences of health disparities from the perspective of stigmatized and disadvantaged groups, health care providers, and during the course of interaction between patients and providers. Several papers describe interventions and other factors that have the potential to reduce differences in health and well-being. We hope the research in this collection inspires more investigators to consider how their work on group processes and intergroup relations can address, and help to eliminate, disparities in health outcomes for the disadvantaged.

Deviation from Design: A Meta-Analytic Review on the Link Between Social Media Use and Less Connection Between the Self and Others.

Social media were designed to connect people and support interpersonal relationships. However, whether social media use is linked to the connection between the self and others is unknown. The present research reviewed findings across psychology to address whether social media use is linked to defining and expressing the self as connected to others (i.e., interdependence) versus separate from others (i.e., independence) and whether this link appears in both individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Eligible studies reported an association between social media use (e.g., time spent, frequency of use) and a characteristic supportive of independence (e.g., narcissism, envy, self-enhancement). Meta-analytic results of 133 effect sizes across the reviewed studies show that social media use is linked to independence rather than interdependence. This relationship was more pronounced in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures. These findings suggest that characteristics linked to social media use differ from what one might expect based on the design of social media to connect people.

Effects of symptom presentation order on perceived disease risk.

People are quick to perceive meaningful patterns in the co-occurrence of events. We report two studies exploring the effects of streaks in symptom checklists on perceived personal disease risk. In the context of these studies, a streak is a sequence of consecutive items on a list that share the characteristic of being either general or specific. We identify a psychological mechanism underlying the effect of streaks in a list of symptoms and show that the effect of streaks on perceived risk varies with the length of the symptom list. Our findings reveal a tendency to infer meaning from streaks in medical and health decision making. Participants perceived a higher personal risk of having an illness when presented with a checklist in which common symptoms were grouped together than when presented with a checklist in which these same symptoms were separated by rare symptoms. This research demonstrates that something as arbitrary as the order in which symptoms are presented in a checklist can affect perceived risk of disease.

Is Seeing Believing? A Longitudinal Study of Vividness of the Future and Its Effects on Academic Self-Efficacy and Success in College.

This research followed students over their first 2 years of college. During this time, many students lose sight of their goals, leading to poor academic performance and leaving STEM and business majors. This research was the first to examine longitudinal changes in future vividness, how those changes impact academic success, and identify sex differences in those relationships. Students who started college with clear pictures of graduation and life after graduation, and those who gained clarity, were more likely to believe in their academic abilities, and, in turn, earn a higher cumulative GPA, and persist in STEM and business. Compared to men, women reported greater initial vividness in both domains. In vividness of graduation, women maintained their advantage with no sex differences in how vividness changed. However, men grew in vividness of life after graduation while women remained stagnant. These findings have implications for interventions to increase academic performance and persistence.

A test of a triadic conceptualization of future self-identification.

People encounter intertemporal decisions every day and often engage in behaviors that are not good for their future. One factor that may explain these decisions is the perception of their distal future self. An emerging body of research suggests that individuals vary in how they perceive their future self and many perceive their future self as a different person. The present research aimed to (1) build on and extend Hershfield's et al. (2011) review of the existing literature and advance the conceptualization of the relationship between the current and future self, (2) extend and develop measures of this relationship, and (3) examine whether and how this relationship predicts intrapsychic and achievement outcomes. The results of the literature review suggested that prior research mostly focused on one or two of the following components: (a) perceived relatedness between the current and future self in terms of similarity and connectedness, (b) vividness in imagining the future self, and (c) degree of positivity felt toward the future self. Additionally, differences in how researchers have labeled the overall construct lead us to propose future self-identification as a new label for the three-component construct. Our research built on existing measures to test the validity of a three-component model of future self-identification. Across three samples of first-year undergraduates, this research established the psychometric properties of the measure, and then examined the relationships between the components and four outcome domains of interest: (1) psychological well-being (self-esteem, hope), (2) imagination of the future (visual imagery of future events, perceived temporal distance), (3) self-control, and (4) academic performance. We demonstrated that the three components of future self-identification were correlated but independent factors. Additionally, the three components differed in their unique relationships with the outcome domains, demonstrating the utility of measuring all three components of future self-identification when seeking to predict important psychological and behavioral outcomes.

Cultural sharing in a global village: evidence for extracultural cognition in European Americans.

The authors examined the effects of exposure to foreign cultural environments and symbols on decision making among European Americans. Although European Americans predicted change less frequently than East Asians did (Pilot Study A), European Americans anticipated greater change when primed with East Asian culturally-laden locations (Pilot Study B and Study 1) and the East Asian yin-yang symbol (Studies 2-7). These effects held in the domains of stock prediction and weather forecasting and were stronger the more familiar European Americans were with the cultural primes, and the longer they had spent overseas. Together, these findings suggest that familiar culturally-laden cues sometimes prime people within one cultural milieu to make so-called extracultural judgments.

Stereotype content model across cultures: towards universal similarities and some differences.

The stereotype content model (SCM) proposes potentially universal principles of societal stereotypes and their relation to social structure. Here, the SCM reveals theoretically grounded, cross-cultural, cross-groups similarities and one difference across 10 non-US nations. Seven European (individualist) and three East Asian (collectivist) nations (N=1,028) support three hypothesized cross-cultural similarities: (a) perceived warmth and competence reliably differentiate societal group stereotypes; (b) many out-groups receive ambivalent stereotypes (high on one dimension; low on the other); and (c) high status groups stereotypically are competent, whereas competitive groups stereotypically lack warmth. Data uncover one consequential cross-cultural difference: (d) the more collectivist cultures do not locate reference groups (in-groups and societal prototype groups) in the most positive cluster (high-competence/high-warmth), unlike individualist cultures. This demonstrates out-group derogation without obvious reference-group favouritism. The SCM can serve as a pancultural tool for predicting group stereotypes from structural relations with other groups in society, and comparing across societies.

Conceptualizing and assessing self-enhancement bias: a componential approach.

Four studies implemented a componential approach to assessing self-enhancement and contrasted this approach with 2 earlier ones: social comparison (comparing self-ratings with ratings of others) and self-insight (comparing self-ratings with ratings by others). In Study 1, the authors varied the traits being rated to identify conditions that lead to more or less similarity between approaches. In Study 2, the authors examined the effects of acquaintance on the conditions identified in Study 1. In Study 3, the authors showed that using rankings renders the self-insight approach equivalent to the component-based approach but also has limitations in assessing self-enhancement. In Study 4, the authors compared the social-comparison and the component-based approaches in terms of their psychological implications; the relation between self-enhancement and adjustment depended on the self-enhancement approach used, and the positive-adjustment correlates of the social-comparison approach disappeared when the confounding influence of the target effect was controlled.

Elucidating the neural correlates of egoistic and moralistic self-enhancement.

Self-enhancement is the biasing of one's view of oneself in a positive direction. The brain correlates of self-enhancement remain unclear though it has been reported that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) may be important for producing self-enhancing responses. Previous studies have not examined whether the neural correlates of self-enhancement depend on the particular domain in which individuals are enhancing themselves. Both moralistic and egoistic words were presented to participants while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the MPFC, precuneus or in a sham orientation. Participants were asked to make decisions as to the words describing themselves, some of which were positive and some of which were negative. It was found the MPFC TMS significantly disrupted egoistic self-enhancement when TMS was delivered to the MPFC. Judgments involving moralistic words were not influenced by TMS. These data provide further evidence that MPFC is involved in self-enhancement, and that the role of MPFC may be selective in this regard.

A Game Theoretical Approach to Hacktivism: Is Attack Likelihood a Product of Risks and Payoffs?

The current study examines hacktivism (i.e., hacking to convey a moral, ethical, or social justice message) through a general game theoretic framework-that is, as a product of costs and benefits. Given the inherent risk of carrying out a hacktivist attack (e.g., legal action, imprisonment), it would be rational for the user to weigh these risks against perceived benefits of carrying out the attack. As such, we examined computer science students' estimations of risks, payoffs, and attack likelihood through a game theoretic design. Furthermore, this study aims at constructing a descriptive profile of potential hacktivists, exploring two predicted covariates of attack decision making, namely, peer prevalence of hacking and sex differences. Contrary to expectations, results suggest that participants' estimations of attack likelihood stemmed solely from expected payoffs, rather than subjective risks. Peer prevalence significantly predicted increased payoffs and attack likelihood, suggesting an underlying descriptive norm in social networks. Notably, we observed no sex differences in the decision to attack, nor in the factors predicting attack likelihood. Implications for policymakers and the understanding and prevention of hacktivism are discussed, as are the possible ramifications of widely communicated payoffs over potential risks in hacking communities.

Fatal Attractions: Attachment to Smartphones Predicts Anthropomorphic Beliefs and Dangerous Behaviors.

As technology's presence grows increasingly concrete in global societies, so too do our relationships with the devices we keep close at hand from day to day. Whereas research has, in the past, framed smartphone addiction in terms of possessional attachment, the present research hypothesizes that anxious smartphone attachment stems from human attachment, in which Anxiously attached individuals may be more likely to generalize their anxious attachment style to communication devices. In the present study, we found support for this hypothesis and showed that anxious smartphone attachment predicts (1) anthropomorphic beliefs, (2) reliance on-or "clinginess" toward-smartphones, and (3) a seemingly compulsive urge to answer one's phone, even in dangerous situations (e.g., while driving). Taken together, we seek to provide a theoretical framework and methodological tools to identify the sources of technology attachment and those most at risk of engaging in dangerous or inappropriate behaviors as a result of attachment to ever-present mobile devices.

Stereotype content model explains prejudice for an envied outgroup: Scale of anti-Asian American Stereotypes.

The Stereotype Content Model hypothesizes anti-Asian American stereotypes differentiating two dimensions: (excessive) competence and (deficient) sociability. The Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes (SAAAS) shows this envious mixed prejudice in six studies. Study 1 began with 131 racial attitude items. Studies 2 and 3 tested 684 respondents on a focused 25-item version. Studies 4 and 5 tested the final 25-item SAAAS on 222 respondents at three campuses; scores predicted outgroup friendships, cultural experiences, and (over)estimated campus presence. Study 6 showed that allegedly low sociability, rather than excessively high competence, drives rejection of Asian Americans, consistent with system justification theory. The SAAAS demonstrates mixed, envious anti-Asian American prejudice, contrasting with more-often-studied contemptuous racial prejudices (i.e., against Blacks).

Disagreeing on whether agreement is persuasive: perceptions of expert group decisions.

While expert groups often make recommendations on a range of non-controversial as well as controversial issues, little is known about how the level of expert consensus-the level of expert agreement-influences perceptions of the recommendations. This research illustrates that for non-controversial issues expert groups that exhibit high levels of agreement are more persuasive than expert groups that exhibit low levels of agreement. This effect is mediated by the perceived entitativity-the perceived cohesiveness or unification of the group-of the expert group. But for controversial issues, this effect is moderated by the perceivers' implicit assumptions about the group composition. When perceivers are provided no information about a group supporting the Affordable Care Act-a highly controversial piece of U.S. legislation that is divided by political party throughout the country-higher levels of agreement are less persuasive than lower levels of agreement because participants assume there were more democrats and fewer republicans in the group. But when explicitly told that the group was half republicans and half democrats, higher levels of agreement are more persuasive.

Narcissism and United States' culture: The view from home and around the world.

The issue of Americans' levels of narcissism is subject to lively debate. The focus of the present research is on the perception of national character (PNC) of Americans as a group. In Study 1, American adults (N = 100) rated Americans as significantly more narcissistic than they perceived themselves and acquaintances. In Study 2, this finding was replicated with American college students (N = 322). PNC ratings of personality traits and externalizing behaviors revealed that Americans were perceived as disagreeable and antisocial as well. In Study 3, we examined the broader characteristics associated with PNC ratings (N = 183). Americans rated the typical American as average on a variety of characteristics (e.g., wealth, education, health, likability) and PNC ratings of narcissism were largely unrelated to these ratings. In Study 4 (N = 1,202) Americans rated PNCs for different prespecified groups of Americans; as expected, PNC ratings of narcissism differed by gender, age, and occupational status such that American males, younger Americans, and Americans working in high-visibility and status occupations were seen as more narcissistic. In Study 5 (N = 733), citizens of 4 other world regions (Basque Country, China, England, Turkey) rated members of their own region as more narcissistic than they perceived themselves, but the effect sizes were smaller than those found in the case of Americans' perceptions of Americans. Additionally, members of these other regions rated Americans as more narcissistic than members of their own region. Finally, in Study 6, participants from around the world (N = 377) rated Americans as more narcissistic, extraverted, and antagonistic than members of their own countries. We discuss the role that America's position as a global economic and military power, paired with a culture that creates and reifies celebrity figures, may play in leading to perceptions of Americans as considerably narcissistic.

Reconceptualizing individual differences in self-enhancement bias: an interpersonal approach.

Self-enhancement bias has been studied from 2 perspectives: L. Festinger's (1954) social comparison theory (self-enhancers perceive themselves more positively than they perceive others) and G. W. Allport's (1937) self-insight theory (self-enhancers perceive themselves more positively than they are perceived by others). These 2 perspectives are theoretically and empirically distinct, and the failure to recognize their differences has led to a protracted debate. A new interpersonal approach to self-enhancement decomposes self-perception into 3 components: perceiver effect, target effect, and unique self-perception. Both theoretical derivations and an illustrative study suggest that this resulting measure of self-enhancement is less confounded by unwanted components of interpersonal perception than previous social comparison and self-insight measures. Findings help reconcile conflicting views about whether self-enhancement is adaptive or maladaptive.

Personality change over 40 years of adulthood: hierarchical linear modeling analyses of two longitudinal samples.

Normative personality change over 40 years was shown in 2 longitudinal cohorts with hierarchical linear modeling of California Psychological Inventory data obtained at multiple times between ages 21-75. Although themes of change and the paucity of differences attributable to gender and cohort largely supported findings of multiethnic cross-sectional samples, the authors also found much quadratic change and much individual variability. The form of quadratic change supported predictions about the influence of period of life and social climate as factors in change over the adult years: Scores on Dominance and Independence peaked in the middle age of both cohorts, and scores on Responsibility were lowest during peak years of the culture of individualism. The idea that personality change is most pronounced before age 30 and then reaches a plateau received no support.

A dog's got personality: a cross-species comparative approach to personality judgments in dogs and humans.

This research offers a blueprint for how a cross-species comparative approach can be realized empirically. In a single design, parallel procedures and instruments were used in 2 species, dogs (Canis familiaris) and humans (Homo sapiens), to test whether personality differences exist and can be judged in dogs as accurately as in humans. Personality judgments of humans and dogs were compared on 3 accuracy criteria: internal consistency, consensus, and correspondence. Results showed that, on all 3 criteria, judgments of dogs were as accurate as judgments of humans. These findings are consistent with the evolutionary continuity hypothesis and suggest an important conclusion not widely considered by either personality or animal researchers: Personality differences do exist and can be measured in animals other than humans.

Do people agree about the causes of behavior? A social relations analysis of behavior ratings and causal attributions.

Two studies examined consistency and agreement in behavior ratings and causal attributions. In Study 1, participants (N = 280) engaged in a series of getting-acquainted conversations in one of 3 communication media (face-to-face, telephone, computer mediated); in Study 2, participants (N = 120) engaged in a competitive group task. In both studies, participants rated themselves and their interaction partners on a set of behaviors and then made attributions about the causes of those behaviors. The major findings were that (a) participants consistently favored some causal factors over others in explaining both their own and their partners' behavior, supporting the existence of generalized attributional styles; and (b) participants showed moderate self-partner and partner-partner agreement about behavior but virtually no agreement about the causes of behavior. Thus, in brief interactions people tend to see themselves and others through the lens of their stable patterns of perceiving and interpreting behavior.