People are more tolerant of inequality when it is expressed in terms of individuals rather than groups at the top.

Despite the ever-growing economic gap between the very wealthy and the rest of the population, support for redistributive policies tends to be low. This research tested whether people's tolerance of inequality differs when it is represented in terms of a successful individual versus a group of people at the top of the economic ladder. We propose that drawing people's attention to wealthy individuals undermines support for redistribution by leading people to believe that the rich person's wealth is well deserved. Across eight studies (n = 2,800), survey participants rated unequal distributions of resources as more fair when presented with an individual, rather than a group, at the top of the distribution. Participants also expressed lower support for redistributive policies after considering inequality represented by successful individuals compared to groups. This effect was driven by people's different attributions for individual versus group success. Participants thought that individuals at the top were more deserving of their successes and, in turn, were less likely to support redistribution when inequality was represented by individual success. These findings suggest that support for inequality, and policies to reduce it, may depend on who people are led to consider when they think about the top of the economic distribution.

The meaning of default options for potential organ donors.

Rates of participation in organ donation programs are known to be powerfully influenced by the relevant default policy in effect ("opt-in" vs. "opt-out"). Three studies provide evidence that this difference in participation may occur in part because the requirement to opt-in or opt-out results in large differences in the meaning that individuals attach to participation. American participants in Study 1 rated participation as a significantly more substantial action when agreement was purportedly obtained under opt-in rather than opt-out conditions, and nonagreement as a greater abrogation of responsibility when that decision was made under opt-out rather than under opt-in conditions. Study 2 replicated these findings with respondents who live in Germany, which employs an opt-in donation policy, and in Austria, which has an opt-out policy. Study 3 required American participants to rate various actions that differ in the effort and self-sacrifice they demand. As predicted, the placement of organ donation on the resulting multidimensional scaling dimension differed significantly depending on whether it purportedly was made in an opt-in country (where it was considered roughly akin to giving away half of one's wealth to charity upon one's death) or an opt-out country (where it fell between letting others get ahead of one in line and volunteering some time to help the poor). We discuss the relationship between this change of meaning account and two other mechanisms-behavioral inertia and implicit norms-that we believe underlie the default effect in decision making and other effects of policies designed to influence decision-makers.

Waiting for Merlot: anticipatory consumption of experiential and material purchases.

Experiential purchases (money spent on doing) tend to provide more enduring happiness than material purchases (money spent on having). Although most research comparing these two types of purchases has focused on their downstream hedonic consequences, the present research investigated hedonic differences that occur before consumption. We argue that waiting for experiences tends to be more positive than waiting for possessions. Four studies demonstrate that people derive more happiness from the anticipation of experiential purchases and that waiting for an experience tends to be more pleasurable and exciting than waiting to receive a material good. We found these effects in studies using questionnaires involving a variety of actual planned purchases, in a large-scale experience-sampling study, and in an archival analysis of news stories about people waiting in line to make a purchase. Consumers derive value from anticipation, and that value tends to be greater for experiential than for material purchases.

A very public replication of the temporal pattern to people's regrets.

Most people recognize that mistaken actions generally sting more than equally mistaken and consequential failures to act (Gleicher et al. 1990 Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 16, 284-295 (doi:10.1177/0146167290162009); Kruger et al. 2005 J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 88, 725-735 (doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.5.725); Landman 1987 Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 13, 524-536 (doi:10.1177/0146167287134009)). At the same time, most people have some intuitive appreciation of Whittier's claim that 'For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, "It might have been"'. As a result, few are surprised to learn that when people look back on their lives and identify what they regret most, they mention regrets of inaction significantly more often than regrets of action. Gilovich and Medvec (Gilovich & Medvec 1994 J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 67, 357-365 (doi:10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.357); Gilovich & Medvec 1995 Psychol. Rev. 102, 379-395 (doi:10.1037/0033-295X.102.2.379)) identified the overarching pattern that incorporates both intuitions: regrets of recent vintage tend to centre on mistakes of action, but long-term regrets tend to involve failures to act. We conducted a replication of Gilovich and Medvec in the field using a unique source: a new museum in Chicago devoted to psychological science. We replicated the significant interaction between action/inaction and temporal perspective, but the precise pattern of that interaction diverged from that reported earlier.

Psychological Science in the Wake of COVID-19: Social, Methodological, and Metascientific Considerations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic's wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon-an event that hinges on human-to-human contact-we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger-not weaker-in its wake.

The streaking star effect: Why people want superior performance by individuals to continue more than identical performance by groups.

We present evidence in 9 studies (n = 2,625) for the Streaking Star Effect-people's greater desire to see runs of successful performance by individuals continue more than identical runs of success by groups. We find this bias in an obscure Italian sport (Study 1), a British trivia competition (Study 2), and a tennis competition in which the number of individual versus team competitors is held constant (Study 3). This effect appears to result from individual streaks of success inspiring more awe than group streaks-and that people enjoying being awe-inspired. In Studies 4 and 5, we found that the experience of awe inspired by an individual streak drives the effect, a result that is itself driven by the greater dispositional attributions people make for the success of individuals as opposed to groups (Study 6). We demonstrate in Studies 7a and 7b that this effect is not an artifact of identifiability. Finally, Study 8 illustrates how the Streaking Star Effect impacts people's beliefs about the appropriate market share for companies run by a successful individual versus a successful management team. We close by discussing implications of this effect for consumer behavior, and for how people react to economic inequality reflected in the success of individuals versus groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Delay, doubt, and decision: how delaying a choice reduces the appeal of (descriptively) normative options.

To help explain a regularity in democratic elections, we examined whether choosing to delay making a choice between a focal option and an alternative tends to make people subsequently less likely to choose what they would otherwise have chosen. The results of two experiments demonstrated that participants who were induced to delay making a decision were indeed less likely to choose the descriptively normative option. An additional experiment that primed a sense of doubt in participants provided support for a self-perception account of this result. Electing to delay making a choice is interpreted as an indication of doubt--doubt that tends to be attributed to the most prominent option. Delay-induced doubt about the normative option makes it less likely to be selected.

Why people are reluctant to tempt fate.

The present research explored the belief that it is bad luck to "tempt fate." Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that people do indeed have the intuition that actions that tempt fate increase the likelihood of negative outcomes. Studies 3-6 examined our claim that the intuition is due, in large part, to the combination of the automatic tendencies to attend to negative prospects and to use accessibility as a cue when judging likelihood. Study 3 demonstrated that negative outcomes are more accessible following actions that tempt fate than following actions that do not tempt fate. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated that the heightened accessibility of negative outcomes mediates the elevated perceptions of likelihood. Finally, Study 6 examined the automatic nature of the underlying processes. The types of actions that are thought to tempt fate as well as the role of society and culture in shaping this magical belief are discussed.

Conceptions of the self and others across time.

People are full of plans, goals, hopes, and fears-future-oriented thoughts that constitute a significant part of the self-concept. But are representations of others similarly future oriented? Studies 1a and 1b demonstrate that the future is seen as a larger component of the self than of another person. Study 2 found that because self-identity is tied to an unrealized future, the self is thought to be less knowable than others in the present. Study 3 indicates that people believe that others need to know who they are striving to be in order to be understood-more so than they believe they need to know others' strivings to understand them. Studies 4a and 4b tested an important implication of these findings, that because so much of who they are is tied to the future, people believe they are further from their ideal selves than others are. Implications for judgment and decision making are discussed.

The ideal road not taken: The self-discrepancies involved in people's most enduring regrets.

Research on the structural features of people's most enduring regrets has focused on whether they result from having acted or having failed to act. Here we focus on a different structural feature, their connection to a person's self-concept. In 6 studies, we predict and find that people's most enduring regrets stem more often from discrepancies between their actual and ideal selves than their actual and ought selves. We also provide evidence that this asymmetry is at least partly due to differences in how people cope with regret. People are quicker to take steps to cope with failures to live up to their duties and responsibilities (ought-related regrets) than their failures to live up to their goals and aspirations (ideal-related regrets). As a consequence, ideal-related regrets are more likely to remain unresolved, leaving people more likely to regret not being all they could have been more than all they should have been. (PsycINFO Database Record

Sudden-death aversion: Avoiding superior options because they feel riskier.

We present evidence of sudden-death aversion (SDA)-the tendency to avoid "fast" strategies that provide a greater chance of success, but include the possibility of immediate defeat, in favor of "slow" strategies that reduce the possibility of losing quickly, but have lower odds of ultimate success. Using a combination of archival analyses and controlled experiments, we explore the psychology behind SDA. First, we provide evidence for SDA and its cost to decision makers by tabulating how often NFL teams send games into overtime by kicking an extra point rather than going for the 2-point conversion (Study 1) and how often NBA teams attempt potentially game-tying 2-point shots rather than potentially game-winning 3-pointers (Study 2). To confirm that SDA is not limited to sports, we demonstrate SDA in a military scenario (Study 3). We then explore two mechanisms that contribute to SDA: myopic loss aversion and concerns about "tempting fate." Studies 4 and 5 show that SDA is due, in part, to myopic loss aversion, such that decision makers narrow the decision frame, paying attention to the prospect of immediate loss with the "fast" strategy, but not the downstream consequences of the "slow" strategy. Study 6 finds that people are more pessimistic about a risky strategy that needn't be pursued (opting for sudden death) than the same strategy that must be pursued. We end by discussing how these twin mechanisms lead to differential expectations of blame from the self and others, and how SDA influences decisions in several different walks of life. (PsycINFO Database Record

Another look at why people are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets.

People are reluctant to exchange lottery tickets, a result that previous investigators have attributed to anticipated regret. The authors suggest that people's subjective likelihood judgments also make them disinclined to switch. Four studies examined likelihood judgments with respect to exchanged and retained lottery tickets and found that (a) exchanged tickets are judged more likely to win a lottery than are retained tickets and (b) exchanged tickets are judged more likely to win the more aversive it would be if the ticket did win. The authors provide evidence that this effect occurs because the act of imagining an exchanged ticket winning the lottery increases the belief that such an event is likely to occur.

Target and observer differences in the acceptance of questionable apologies.

Do people distinguish between sincere and insincere apologies? Because targets and observers face different constraints, we hypothesized that observers would differentiate between spontaneous and coerced apologies but that targets would not. In Studies 1 and 2 participants either received or observed a spontaneous apology, a coerced apology, or no apology, following a staged offense, and the predicted target-observer difference emerged. Studies 3-5 provided evidence in support of 3 mechanisms that contribute to this target-observer difference. Studies 3 and 4 indicate that this difference is due, in part, to a motivation to be seen positively by others and a motivation to feel good about oneself. Study 5 suggests that social scripts constrain the responses of targets more than those of observers.

One-shot illusory correlations and stereotype formation.

In four studies, the authors explored the emergence of one-shot illusory correlations--in which a single instance of unusual behavior by a member of a rare group is sufficient to create an association between group and behavior. In Studies 1, 2, and 3, unusual behaviors committed by members of rare groups were processed differently than other types of behaviors. They received more processing time, prompted more attributional thinking, and were more memorable. In Study 4, the authors obtained evidence from two implicit measures of association that one-shot illusory correlations are generalized to other members of a rare group. The authors contend that one-shot illusory correlations arise because unusual pairings of behaviors and groups uniquely prompt people to entertain group membership as an explanation of the unusual behavior.

Home alone: Why people believe others' social lives are richer than their own.

Although decades of research show that people tend to see themselves in the best possible light, we present evidence that people have a surprisingly grim outlook on their social lives. In 11 studies (N = 3,293; including 3 preregistered), we find that most people think that others lead richer and more active social lives than they do themselves. We show that this bias holds across multiple populations (college students, MTurk respondents, shoppers at a local mall, and participants from a large, income-stratified online panel), correlates strongly with well-being, and is particularly acute for social activities (e.g., the number of parties one attends or proximity to the "inner circle" of one's social sphere). We argue that this pessimistic bias stems from the fact that trendsetters and socialites come most easily to mind as a standard of comparison and show that reducing the availability of extremely social people eliminates this bias. We conclude by discussing implications for research on social comparison and self-enhancement. (PsycINFO Database Record

The headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry: An availability bias in assessments of barriers and blessings.

Seven studies provide evidence of an availability bias in people's assessments of the benefits they've enjoyed and the barriers they've faced. Barriers and hindrances command attention because they have to be overcome; benefits and resources can often be simply enjoyed and largely ignored. As a result of this "headwind/tailwind" asymmetry, Democrats and Republicans both claim that the electoral map works against them (Study 1), football fans take disproportionate note of the challenging games on their team's schedules (Study 2), people tend to believe that their parents have been harder on them than their siblings are willing to grant (Study 3), and academics think that they have a harder time with journal reviewers, grant panels, and tenure committees than members of other subdisciplines (Study 7). We show that these effects are the result of the enhanced availability of people's challenges and difficulties (Studies 4 and 5) and are not simply the result of self-serving attribution management (Studies 6 and 7). We also show that the greater salience of a person's headwinds can lead people to believe they have been treated unfairly and, as a consequence, more inclined to endorse morally questionable behavior (Study 7). Our discussion focuses on the implications of the headwind/tailwind asymmetry for a variety of ill-conceived policy decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record

Cultivating gratitude and giving through experiential consumption.

Gratitude promotes well-being and prompts prosocial behavior. Here, we examine a novel way to cultivate this beneficial emotion. We demonstrate that 2 different types of consumption-material consumption (buying for the sake of having) and experiential consumption (buying for the sake of doing)-differentially foster gratitude and giving. In 6 studies we show that reflecting on experiential purchases (e.g., travel, meals out, tickets to events) inspires more gratitude than reflecting on material purchases (e.g., clothing, jewelry, furniture), and that thinking about experiences leads to more subsequent altruistic behavior than thinking about possessions. In Studies 1-2b, we use within-subject and between-subjects designs to test our main hypothesis: that people are more grateful for what they've done than what they have. Study 3 finds evidence for this effect in the real-world setting of online customer reviews: Consumers are more likely to spontaneously mention feeling grateful for experiences they have bought than for material goods they have bought. In our final 2 studies, we show that experiential consumption also makes people more likely to be generous to others. Participants who contemplated a significant experiential purchase behaved more generously toward anonymous others in an economic game than those who contemplated a significant material purchase. It thus appears that shifting spending toward experiential consumption can improve people's everyday lives as well as the lives of those around them. (PsycINFO Database Record

Here's looking at me: the effect of memory perspective on assessments of personal change.

Five studies manipulated the memory perspective (1st-person vs. 3rd-person) individuals used to visually recall autobiographical events and examined its effects on assessments of personal change. Psychotherapy clients recalled their first treatment (Study 1), and undergraduates recalled past social awkwardness (Study 2). Participants who were induced to recall from the 3rd-person perspective believed, and acted as though (Study 2), they had changed more since the events occurred. Subsequent studies revealed a crucial moderator: Third-person recall produces judgments of greater self-change when people are inclined to look for evidence of change, but lesser self-change when they are inclined to look for evidence of continuity. This pattern emerged when motivation (Studies 1 and 2), goals (Study 3), instructions (Study 4), and self-esteem (Study 5) determined participants' focus on change versus continuity. Results have implications for constructivism in memory and judgment and for the ability to sustain self-improvement efforts.

Peering into the bias blind spot: people's assessments of bias in themselves and others.

People tend to believe that their own judgments are less prone to bias than those of others, in part because they tend to rely on introspection for evidence of bias in themselves but on their lay theories in assessing bias in others. Two empirical consequences of this asymmetry are explored. Studies 1 and 2 document that people are more inclined to think they are guilty of bias in the abstract than in any specific instance. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that people tend to believe that their own personal connection to a given issue is a source of accuracy and enlightenment but that such personal connections in the case of others who hold different views are a source of bias. The implications of this asymmetry in assessing objectivity and bias in the self versus others are discussed.

Some "Thing" to Talk About? Differential Story Utility From Experiential and Material Purchases.

Psychological research has shown that experiential purchases (a hike in the woods, a trip to Rome) bring more happiness than material purchases (a designer shirt, a flat-screen television). The research presented in this article investigates one cause and consequence of this difference: People talk more about their experiences than their possessions and derive more value from doing so. A series of eight studies demonstrate that taking away the ability to talk about experiences (but not material goods) would diminish the enjoyment they bring; that people believe they derive more happiness from talking about experiential purchases; that when given a choice about which of their purchases to talk about, people are more likely to talk about experiential rather than material consumption; and that people report being more inclined to talk about their experiences than their material purchases and derive more hedonic benefits as a result--both in prospect and in retrospect.