Automatic threat processing shows evidence of exclusivity.

De Neys argues against assigning exclusive capacities to automatic versus controlled processes. The dual implicit process model provides a theoretical rationale for the exclusivity of automatic threat processing, and corresponding data provide empirical evidence of such exclusivity. De Neys's dismissal of exclusivity is premature and based on a limited sampling of psychological research.

Female advantage in threat avoidance manifests in threat reaction but not threat detection.

Threat avoidance involves both detection of a threatening stimulus and reaction to it. We demonstrate with empirically validated stimuli (that are threatening, nonthreatening-negative, neutral, or positive) that threat detection is more pronounced among males, whereas threat reactivity is more pronounced among females. Why women are less efficient detectors of threat challenges Benenson et al.'s conceptual analysis.

A method for estimating the time of initiating correct categorization in mouse-tracking.

Mouse-tracking facilitates exploration of the mental processes underlying decision-making. As the cognitive system works to settle on a decision, response competition manifests in the motor movements of the hand, bringing the mouse relatively closer to one alternative versus the other. Many metrics provide insight into decision-making processes by indexing the shape or complexity of the mouse trajectory. Lacking, however, is a metric that estimates the point in time when a participant begins to correctly categorize a stimulus. We rectify this absence by introducing a metric we refer to as time of initiating correct categorization (TICC), which is the point in time when people began moving relatively closer to the selected target relative to the distractor. We briefly review existing approaches to measuring time in mouse-tracking before describing the TICC and demonstrating its utility in three data sets.

The threat sensitivity scale: A brief self-report measure of dispositional sensitivity toward perceiving threats to physical harm.

The possibility of experiencing physical harm caused by an object, animal, or person is an omnipresent risk in almost any situation. People show variability in their in the propensity to perceive the possibility of harm from any ostensibly innocuous object or situation-a so-called threat bias. Despite the important psychological and societal consequences resulting from individual differences in physical threat bias, there does not currently exist an easily administered means to capture this disposition. We therefore endeavored to create a brief reliable self-report index of threat sensitivity for use by the many fields interested in the role of threat processing. We present here a physical threat sensitivity scale (TSS) that captures the dispositional tendency to perceive the possibility of physical harm in ostensibly innocuous situations or objects. We detail the development and validation of the TSS as a reliable index of individual threat bias (Studies 1a and 1b) and provide strong convergent evidence of the relationship between TS and both relevant individual differences (Study 2) and behavioral and perceptual indicates of threat bias (Study 3 and Study 4).

The civilian's dilemma: Civilians exhibit automatic defensive responses to the police.

Interactions between police officers and civilians incur for both police and civilians the possibility of danger due to a nonzero likelihood of encountering a physical threat. A body of work examining the implications of threat processes during police-civilian interactions focuses almost exclusively on the perspective of police officers, under the auspice that police use-of-force decisions stem from perceptions and misperceptions of threat (e.g., research on the shooter bias). Almost no research has examined these dynamics from the perspective of civilians whose encounter with police involves interacting with an armed and potentially dangerous individual. In the current work, we advance the idea that just as police may respond to civilians as threats, civilians may respond to the police as threats. That is, among civilians, encountering the police may evoke a combination of defensive bodily and behavioral responses. Across three studies (N = 603) each utilizing unique measures of defensive behavioral and physiological responding, we found that people more rapidly avoid police than nonpolice, demonstrate enhanced defensive freeze responses to police than nonpolice, and evince larger defensive physiological preparation toward police than nonpolice. In light of these patterns, we discuss the implications of defensive responses for shaping civilian behavior in real-world encounters with the police. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Leveraging impression management motives to increase the use of face masks.

Three pilot studies (Ntotal = 832) revealed that people held more positive attitudes toward targets wearing protective face masks. Therefore, we examined whether knowledge of this self-presentational benefit would increase people's intentions to wear face masks. Participants (N = 997) were randomly assigned to read a passage about the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety benefit of mask-wearing, the self-presentational benefit of mask-wearing, or a combination of the latter two. Although this manipulation failed, findings revealed that preexisting beliefs about masked targets being more likable were positively associated with mask-wearing intentions, particularly among participants less concerned with disease or more politically conservative.

Correction to: On the Automatic Nature of Threat: Physiological and Evaluative Reactions to Survival-Threats Outside Conscious Perception.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s42761-021-00090-6.].

On the Automatic Nature of Threat: Physiological and Evaluative Reactions to Survival-Threats Outside Conscious Perception.

A neural architecture that preferentially processes immediate survival threats relative to other negatively and positively valenced stimuli presumably evolved to facilitate survival. The empirical literature on threat superiority, however, has suffered two problems: methodologically distinguishing threatening stimuli from negative stimuli and differentiating whether responses are sped and strengthened by threat superiority or delayed and diminished by conscious processing of nonthreatening stimuli. We addressed both problems in three within-subject studies that compared responses to empirically validated sets of threating, negative, positive, and neutral stimuli, and isolated threat superiority from the opposing effect of conscious attention by presenting stimuli outside conscious perception. Consistent with threat superiority, threatening stimuli elicited stronger skin-conductance (Study 1), startle-eyeblink (Study 2), and more negative downstream evaluative responses (Study 3) relative to the undifferentiated responses to negative, positive, and neutral stimuli. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00090-6.

Automatic and controlled antecedents of suicidal ideation and action: A dual-process conceptualization of suicidality.

Dual-process models of cognition distinguish relatively automatic from relatively controlled processes in terms of their interactive impact on perception, judgment, and behavior. Such models have advanced explanation and prediction in a variety of domains across psychology but have yet to be comprehensively applied to the pressing societal and public health problem of suicide. We propose a model of suicide that integrates dual-process models of social cognition with ideation-to-action conceptualizations of suicide. The model specifies: (a) suicide-relevant automatic associations involving the self, others, the future, death, and bodily harm, (b) suicide-relevant motives involving the self, interpersonal relations, the future, and the desire to die, and (c) hypotheses regarding the conditions under which automatic associations and motives individually and interactively impact suicidal ideation and lethal action at various stages of an ideation-to-action framework. The model recasts a number of suicide-relevant variables in terms of the opportunity factor of dual-process theories of attitudes, which encompasses capacity-relevant variables (e.g., time, cognitive resources) that determine whether suicide-relevant judgments and behavior are the result of relatively automatic associations or more controlled, deliberative cognition. Accordingly, the model articulates a number of novel predictions regarding the sources of suicide-relevant automatic associations, motives, and opportunity factors, as well as their interactive influences on suicidal ideation and action. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

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.

White civilians' implicit danger evaluation of police officers underlies explicit perception of police.

The role of implicit processes during police-civilian encounters is well studied from the perspective of the police. Decades of research on the "shooter bias" suggests that implicit Black-danger associations potentiate the perception of threat of Black individuals, leading to a racial bias in the decision to use lethal force. Left understudied are civilians' possible associations of police with danger and how such associations pervade behavior and explicit views of the police. The current work begins to address this gap. In two within-subjects studies, we separately assess police-threat (i.e., safety/danger) and police-valence (i.e., good/bad) associations as well as their relative influences on explicit perceptions of police. Study 1 revealed that implicit threat evaluations (police-danger associations) more strongly predicted negative explicit views of the police compared to implicit valence evaluations (police-negative associations). Study 2 replicated these findings and suggests that individuals evaluate the police as more dangerous versus negative when each response is pitted against each other within single misattribution procedure trials. The possible implications for explicit attitudes toward police reform and behavior during police-civilian encounters are discussed.

Danger or dislike: Distinguishing threat from negative valence as sources of automatic anti-Black bias.

The Dual Implicit Process Model (March et al., 2018b) distinguishes the implicit processing of physical threat (i.e., "Can it hurt or kill me?") from valence (i.e., "Do I dislike/like it?"). Five studies tested whether automatic anti-Black bias is due to White Americans associating Black men with threat, negative valence, or both. Studies 1 and 2 assessed how quickly White participants decided whether positive, negative, and threatening images were good versus bad when primed by Black versus White male-faces. Studies 3 and 4 assessed how early in the decision process White participants began deciding whether Black and White (and, in Study 3, Asian) male-faces displaying anger, sadness, happiness, or no emotion were, in Study 3, dangerous, depressed, cheerful, or calm or, in Study 4, dangerous, negative, or positive. Study 5 assessed how quickly White participants decided whether negative and threatening words were negative versus dangerous when primed by Black versus White male-names. All studies indicated that White Americans automatically associate Black men with physical threat. Study 3 indicated the association is unique to Black men and did not extend to Asian men as a general intergroup effect. Studies 3, 4, and 5, which simultaneously paired threat against negativity, indicated that the Black-threat association is stronger than a Black-negative association. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Actual versus perceived infection rates of COVID-19: Impact on distress, behavior and disability.

OBJECTIVE: Accurate threat appraisal is central to survival. In the case of the coronavirus pandemic, accurate threat appraisal is difficult due to incomplete medical knowledge as well as complex social factors (e.g., mixed public health messages). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree to which individuals accurately perceive COVID-19 infection rates and to explore the role of COVID-19 threat perception on emotional and behavioral responses both cross sectionally and prospectively. METHODS: A community sample (N = 249) was assessed using online crowdsourcing and followed for one month. COVID-19 threat appraisal was compared with actual COVID-19 infection rates and deaths at the time of data collection in each participant's county and state. It was predicted that actual versus perceived COVID-19 infection rates would only be modestly associated. Relative to actual infection rates, perceived infection rates were hypothesized to be a better predictor of COVID-related behaviors, distress, and impairment. RESULTS: Findings indicated that relative to actual infection, perceived infection was a better predictor of COVID-related outcomes cross sectionally and longitudinally. Interestingly, actual infection rates were negatively related to behaviors cross sectionally (e.g., less stockpiling). Prospectively, these variables interacted to predict avoidance behaviors over time such that the relationship between perceived infection and avoidance was stronger as actual infection increased. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that perceived COVID-19 infection is significantly associated with COVID-related behaviors, distress and impairment whereas actual infection rates have a less important and perhaps even paradoxical influence on behavioral responses to the pandemic.

I Know (What) You Are, But What Am I? The Effect of Recategorization Threat and Perceived Immutability on Prejudice.

Learning one is similar to a stigmatized group can threaten one's identity and prompt disassociation from the group. What are the consequences of learning of a similarity to a stigmatized group when that similarity implies possible recategorization into the group? We investigated how learning of an immutable, recategorization implying similarity with an outgroup affects implicitly and explicitly assessed prejudice. In Study 1, White participants who believed they had above average genetic overlap with African Americans showed decreased prejudice on implicit but not explicit measures. In Study 2, straight/heterosexual participants who were led to believe they exhibited some same-sex attraction showed reduced implicitly assessed prejudice, but only if they believed sexual orientation was biologically determined. Thus, learning of an identity-implying similarity with an outgroup can reduce implicit prejudice if that group membership is believed to be immutable. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

In Harm's Way: On Preferential Response to Threatening Stimuli.

Given the evolutionary significance of survival, the mind might be particularly sensitive (in terms of strength and speed of reaction) to stimuli that pose an immediate threat to physical harm. To rectify limitations in past research, we pilot-tested stimuli to obtain images that are threatening, nonthreatening-negative, positive, or neutral. Three studies revealed that participants (a) were faster to detect a threatening than nonthreatening-negative image when each was embedded among positive or neutral images, (b) oriented their initial gaze more frequently toward threatening than nonthreatening-negative, positive, or neutral images, and (c) evidenced larger startle-eyeblinks to threatening than to nonthreatening-negative, positive, or neutral images. Social-psychological implications for the mind's sensitivity to threat are discussed.

Strangers With Benefits: Attraction to Outgroup Men Increases as Fertility Increases Across the Menstrual Cycle.

Research typically reveals that outgroups are regarded with disinterest at best and hatred and enmity at worst. Working from an evolutionary framework, we identify a unique pattern of outgroup attraction. The small-group lifestyle of pre-human ancestors plausibly limited access to genetically diverse mates. Ancestral females may have solved the inbreeding dilemma while balancing parental investment pressures by mating with outgroup males either via converting to an outgroup or cuckolding the ingroup. A vestige of those mating strategies might manifest in human women as a cyclic pattern of attraction across the menstrual cycle, such that attraction to outgroup men increases as fertility increases across the cycle. Two studies, one using a longitudinal method and the other an experimental method, evidenced the hypothesized linear relationship between attraction to outgroup men and fertility in naturally cycling women.