Attitudes Toward Cisgender Women's Participation in Sex Work: Opportunity for Agency or Harmful Exchange?

Despite the stigmatization of sex work in society, little empirical research has examined attitudes toward sex work, especially its modern incarnations (e.g., sugar relationships, webcamming). Here, a sample of 298 US residents (Mage = 40.06 years; 59.1% male, 40.9% female) was recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Various theoretical predictors (e.g., right-wing authoritarianism [RWA]), sociosexuality) were set to predict the degree to which four sex work domains (prostitution, pornography, sugar relationships, webcamming) provide cisgender women agency (beneficial) or harm them (detrimental). We found that the domains of sex work were organized hierarchically, as theorized by the so-called "whorearchy," whereby the more "unfavorable" domains (e.g., prostitution) fall at the bottom, and the more "favorable" ones (e.g., webcamming) sit at the top. Additionally, multiple regression analyses revealed that RWA (negatively) and sociosexuality (positively) were the strongest predictors of sex work agency across various domains. In predicting harm, RWA, feminism, religiosity, and age were unique positive predictors, whereas sociosexuality and male (vs. female) self-identified sex were unique negative predictors, across the four domains of sex work. Moreover, individual differences (e.g., RWA) were often significantly stronger predictors of agency or harm among female than male participants. The results suggest that although sex work domains vary in agency and harm ratings, individual differences (most notably, RWA and sociosexuality) are important predictors across domains, especially for cisgender women. Given the growing prevalence of such online forms of sex work, along with growing evidence of sugar relationships, it will become increasingly important to track reactions as these forms of sex work evolve.

Fighting over who dictates the nature of prejudice.

A growing trend, reflected in the target article, effectively shifts control of prejudice operationalization to align with right-leaning priorities (and away from disadvantaged groups' voices and social justice). The article would only be compelling if experiments misaligned with real-world findings, if experimenters ignored nuances and moderators, and if the call to consider the social context included the macro-level societal context.

Tensions within and between vegans and vegetarians: Meat-free motivations matter.

Under the superordinate umbrella of "veg*n", vegans and vegetarians share a disavowal of meat consumption but differ regarding the use of animal products and by-products. Furthermore, within each subgroup there exist multiple motivations (or reasons) for diet choice, some with more moral overtones than others. Despite being on the same "team" relative to the meat-eating majority, there is tremendous potential for expressions of subgroup distinctiveness and tension. In an online sample of veg*ns, we asked participants to report on views of and experiences with veg*ns, including separately evaluating vegans and vegetarians for animal, environmental, health, or religious reasons (i.e., 8 groups). Overall vegan (vs. vegetarian) participants expressed more subgroup bias, with vegans consistently preferred over vegetarians. Both vegans and vegetarians preferred veg*ns with "ethical" motivations (animal or environmental), and reported negative experiences with their subgroup outgroups (i.e., vegetarians and vegans, respectively). Problematically, in terms of group cohesion, vegetarians reported elevated anxiety and vigilance in their interactions with animal vegans especially. Overall the results suggest that, despite sharing a superordinate category and goal, and despite recent calls for veg*nism to become a more inclusive and wider tent, substantial tensions exist that can disrupt group cohesion and productivity.

The role of meat appetite in willfully disregarding factory farming as a pandemic catalyst risk.

Most infectious diseases are zoonotic, "jumping" from animals to humans, with COVID-19 no exception. Although many zoonotic transmissions occur on industrial-scale factory farms, public discussions mainly blame wild animal ("wet") markets or focus on reactionary solutions, posing a psychological obstacle to preventing future pandemics. In two pre-registered studies early in the 2020 pandemic, we examined whether British adults fail to recognize factory farming in causing epidemics, and whether such dismissal represents motivated cognition. Cross-sectional data (Study 1, N = 302) confirmed that people blame factory farms and global meat consumption less than wild animal trade and consumption or lack of government preparedness, especially among meat-committed persons. Experimental exposure (Study 2, N = 194) to information blaming factory farms (vs. wild animal markets) produced lower endorsement of preventive solutions than of reactionary solutions, which was exacerbated among meat-committed persons. These findings suggest that people, especially those highly committed to eating meat, willfully disregard solutions targeting animal agriculture and global meat consumption to prevent future pandemics precisely because such solutions implicate their dietary habits. Better understanding motivated beliefs about the causes of and solutions to pandemics is critical for developing interventions.

Aggression Toward Sexualized Women Is Mediated by Decreased Perceptions of Humanness.

Researchers have argued that the regulation of female sexuality is a major catalyst for women's intrasexual aggression. The present research examined whether women behave more aggressively toward a sexualized woman and whether this is explained by lower ratings of the target's humanness. Results showed that women rated another woman lower on uniquely human personality traits when she was dressed in a sexualized (vs. conventional) manner. Lower humanness ratings subsequently predicted increased aggression toward her in a behavioral measure of aggression. This effect was moderated by trait intrasexual competitiveness; lower humanness ratings translated into more aggression, but only for women scoring relatively high on intrasexual competition. Follow-up studies revealed that the effect of sexualized appearance on perceived humanness was not due to the atypicality of the clothing in a university setting. The current project reveals a novel psychological mechanism through which interacting with a sexualized woman promotes aggressive behavior toward her.

Conservatism predicts lapses from vegetarian/vegan diets to meat consumption (through lower social justice concerns and social support).

Lapses from vegetarian and vegan (i.e., veg*n) food choices to meat consumption are very common, suggesting that sustaining veg*nism is challenging. But little is known about why people return to eating animals after initially deciding to avoid meat consumption. Several potential explanatory factors include personal inconvenience, meat cravings, awkwardness in social settings, or health/nutrition concerns. Here we test the degree to which political ideology predicts lapsing to meat consumption. Past research demonstrates that political ideology predicts present levels of meat consumption, whereby those higher in right-wing ideologies eat more animals, even after controlling for their hedonistic liking of meat (e.g., Dhont & Hodson, 2014). To what extent might political ideology predict whether one has lapsed from veg*n foods back to meat consumption? In a largely representative US community sample (N = 1313) of current and former veg*ns, those higher (vs. lower) in conservatism exhibited significantly greater odds of being a former than current veg*n, even after controlling for age, education, and gender. This ideology-lapsing relation was mediated (i.e., explained) by those higher (vs. lower) in conservatism: (a) adopting a veg*n diet for reasons less centered in justice concerns (animal rights, environment, feeding the poor); and (b) feeling socially unsupported in their endeavor. In contrast, factors such as differential meat craving or lifestyle inconvenience played little mediational role. These findings demonstrate that ideology and justice concerns are particularly relevant to understanding resilience in maintaining veg*n food choices. Implications for understanding why people eat meat, and how to develop intervention strategies, are discussed.

Do American States with more religious or conservative populations search more for sexual content on google?

In America, religiosity and conservatism are generally associated with opposition to non-traditional sexual behavior, but prominent political scandals and recent research suggest a paradoxical private attraction to sexual content on the political and religious right. We examined associations between state-level religiosity/conservatism and anonymized interest in searching for sexual content online using Google Trends (which calculates within-state search volumes for search terms). Across two separate years, and controlling for demographic variables, we observed moderate-to-large positive associations between: (1) greater proportions of state-level religiosity and general web searching for sexual content and (2) greater proportions of state-level conservatism and image-specific searching for sex. These findings were interpreted in terms of the paradoxical hypothesis that a greater preponderance of right-leaning ideologies is associated with greater preoccupation with sexual content in private internet activity. Alternative explanations (e.g., that opposition to non-traditional sex in right-leaning states leads liberals to rely on private internet sexual activity) are discussed, as are limitations to inference posed by aggregate data more generally.

Is it impolite to discuss cognitive differences between liberals and conservatives?

Hibbing and colleagues argue convincingly that liberals and conservatives differ in reactivity to (negative) stimuli. Yet their analysis sidesteps evidence that cognitive ability differs as a function of ideology. Cognitive abilities, like cognitive preferences (e.g., structure needs), shape whether stimuli are psychologically threatening (prompting avoidance) or offer opportunity (prompting approach). Incorporation of these findings is critical despite any socially "delicate" implications.

Robert (Bob) Anthony Altemeyer (1940-2024).

Robert (Bob) Anthony Altemeyer (June 6, 1940-February 7, 2024) was an influential social psychologist who also shaped personality and political psychology. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Bob was educated at Yale (undergraduate) and Carnegie-Mellon (graduate). Following a 2-year stint at Doane College in Nebraska, he established his career at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada) from 1968 to 2008. In 1986, Bob was awarded the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research, largely for his development of the right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) construct. Whereas the authoritarian personality construct developed by Adorno and colleagues in the 1950s was rooted in psychodynamics, Bob drew on social learning principles and conceptualized authoritarianism as both an attitudinal orientation and trait. Not all of Bob's ideas held true, such as the social learning underpinnings that he proposed for RWA. But true to his inquisitive nature, he wrote that he would be excited to learn of RWA's strong heritable components if uncovered (as they later were). An anticonformist to the core, Bob published almost exclusively in books despite the field prioritizing journal articles, typically as sole author and working with few collaborators, and writing about complex ideas with rather informal and unconventional language. His legacy is proof that fighting the odds and remaining authentic, rather than chasing conventions and norms, can leave an indelible mark on science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A cautionary note on interpreting research findings in the presence of statistical suppression.

In regression analyses predictor variables can suppress the effects of other predictor variables, sometimes even resulting in "flipped" relations relative to their zero-order relations (i.e. negative suppression). Drawing on research examining the relations between religion and prejudice, and between ideology and desiring "tall poppies" (successful people) to fall, we highlight examples where researchers appear to have made inappropriate or confusing interpretations of their findings. We compare these examples to a best practice illustration involving associations between psychopathy and counter-productive work behavior. Finally, we provide practical guidelines for thinking about suppression effects in research programmes.

Replicating and extending Sengupta et al. (2023): Contact predicts no within-person longitudinal outgroup-bias change.

Intergroup contact has long been touted as a premier means to reduce prejudice and forge positive bonds with outgroups. Given its origins in psychological research, it is perhaps of little surprise that contact is expected to induce change within people over time. Yet using random-intercepts crossed-lagged modeling that parses within-person from between-person effects, Sengupta et al. (2023) recently found no evidence of within-person change, only unexplained between-person effects, regarding contact's effects on outgroup solidarity in New Zealand. We conceptually replicated their study, focusing on modern racism and an affect thermometer as the outcomes, in a three-wave study of White British participants (NT1 = 946, NT2 = 667, NT3 = 591) and their attitudes toward foreigners. We replicated the general pattern described by Sengupta and colleagues, confirming between-person effects without within-person effects, suggestive of third-variable explanations. As a novel finding, we discover that differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) can account for the observed between-person effects. Problematically for contact theory, contact effects, at least those relying on self-reported accounts, increasingly appear to reflect differences between people (person factors) rather than being context-driven (situation factors)-such that those lower (vs. higher) in SDO and RWA are more favorable toward outgroups, rather than intergroup contact bringing about positive outcomes itself. Implications for theory development and intervention are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Bright minds and dark attitudes: lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice through right-wing ideology and low intergroup contact.

Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.

Of babies and bathwater, and rabbits and rabbit holes: a plea for conflict prevention, not conflict promotion.

Dixon et al. overlook the fact that contact predicts not only favorable out-group attitudes/evaluations, but also cognitions, affect, and behavior. The weight of evidence supporting the benefits of intergroup contact cautions against throwing the (contact) baby out with the bathwater. The goal to "ignite struggles" in pursuit of social equality, we argue, incautiously risks hurling us down the proverbial rabbit hole.

Reconsidering reconsent: Threats to internal and external validity when participants reconsent after debriefing.

We overwhelmingly utilize (partially) informed consent for, and debriefing of, human research participants. Also common is the practice of reconsent, particularly where changes in study protocols (or in participants themselves) occur midstream - participants consent again to remaining in the project or to having their data included. Worryingly under-discussed is post-debriefing reconsent, wherein participants can withdraw their data after learning more fully of the study's goals and methods. Yet, major ethics bodies in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom promote such practice, with vague and potentially problematic guidelines. Here, the author provides examples involving such reconsent practice, highlighting potentially serious problems that are scientific (e.g. threats to internal and external validity) and ethical (i.e. to the participant, their peers, the researcher and society) in nature. Particularly, problematic is the introduction, by design, of unknowable bias in our research findings. For example, highly prejudiced participants could withdraw data from a discrimination study after learning of the study's hypotheses and goals. The practice may arguably contradict an Open Science goal of increasing research transparency. This call for discussion about the direction of psychological science methods aims to engage a broader discussion in the research community.

News media impact on sociopolitical attitudes.

In the present project we assessed whether partisan news affects consumers' views on polarizing issues. In Study 1 nationally representative cross-sectional data (N = 4249) reveals that right-leaning news consumption is associated with more right-leaning attitudes, and left-leaning news consumption is associated with more left-leaning attitudes. Additional three-wave longitudinal data (N = 484) in Study 2 reveals that right-leaning news is positively (and left-leaning news is negatively) associated with right-leaning issue stances three months later, even after controlling for prior issue stances. In a third (supplemental) study (N = 305), random assignment to right-leaning (but not left-leaning) news (vs. control) experimentally fostered more right-leaning stances, regardless of participants' previously held political ideology. These findings suggest that partisan news, and particularly right-leaning news, can polarize consumers in their sociopolitical positions, sharpen political divides, and shape public policy.

Reductions in perceived COVID-19 threat amid UK's mass public vaccination programme coincide with reductions in outgroup avoidance (but not prejudice).

It has long been proposed that perceptions of threat contribute to greater outgroup negativity. Much of the existing evidence on the threat-prejudice association in the real world, however, is cross-sectional in nature. Such designs do not adequately capture individual-level changes in constructs, and how changes in constructs relate to changes in other theoretically relevant constructs. The current research exploited the unique opportunity afforded by the mass COVID-19 vaccination programme in the United Kingdom to explore whether reductions in pathogen threat coincide with reductions in outgroup prejudice and avoidance. A two-wave longitudinal study (N1  = 912, N2  = 738) measured British adult's perceptions of COVID-19 threat and anti-immigrant bias before and during mass vaccine rollout in the United Kingdom. Tests of latent change models demonstrated that perceived COVID-19 threat significantly declined as the vaccine programme progressed, as did measures of outgroup avoidance tendencies, but not prejudiced attitudes. Critically, change in threat was systematically correlated with change in outgroup avoidance: those with greater reductions in perceived COVID-19 threat were, on average, those with greater reductions in outgroup avoidance. Findings provide important and novel insights into the implications of disease protection strategies for intergroup relations during an actual pandemic context, as it unfolds over time.

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.

Pushing Back Against the Microaggression Pushback in Academic Psychology: Reflections on a Concept-Creep Paradox.

Echoing the 1960s, the 2020s opened with racial tensions boiling. The Black Lives Matter movement is energized, issuing pleas to listen to Black voices regarding day-to-day discrimination and expressing frustrations over the slow progress of social justice. However, psychological scientists have published only several opinion pieces on racial microaggressions, primarily objections, and strikingly little empirical data. Here I document three trends in psychology that coincide with the academic pushback against microaggressions: concept-creep concerns, especially those regarding expanded notions of harm; the expansion of right-leaning values in moral judgments (moral foundations theory); and an emphasis on prejudice symmetry, with the political left deemed equivalently biased against right-leaning targets (e.g., the rich, police) as the right is against left-leaning targets (e.g., Black people, women, LGBT+ people). Psychological scientists have ignored power dynamics and have strayed from their mission to understand and combat prejudice against disadvantaged populations, rendering researchers distracted and ill-equipped to tackle the microaggression concept. An apparent creep paradox, with calls to both reduce (e.g., harm) and expand (e.g., liberal prejudices, conservative moral foundations) concepts, poses a serious challenge to research on prejudice. I discuss the need for psychology to better capture Black experiences and to "tell it like it is" or risk becoming an irrelevant discipline of study.

Butchers' and deli workers' psychological adaptation to meat.

In many societies today, the average consumer is largely removed from the earlier stages of meat production wherein meat, in many ways, resembles an animal. The present study examined the emotional and psychological consequences of recurrent meat handling. Fifty-six individuals with commercial experience handling meat (butchers and deli workers) were contrasted with 103 individuals without such experience. Participants were presented images of meat from 3 animals-cows, sheep, and fish-that were experimentally manipulated in their degree of animal resemblance. Participants rated the images on measures of disgust, empathy for the animal, and meat-animal association. Broader beliefs and attitudes about meat and animals were also assessed. We used mixed-effect linear modeling to examine the role of time spent handling meat in participants' psychological adaptation to it. We observed significant reductions in disgust, empathy, and meat-animal association within the first year or 2 of meat handling for all types of meat. Time spent handling meat also predicted the degree to which a person defended and rationalized meat consumption and production, independent of a participant's gender and age. The findings have implications for understanding how people adapt to potentially aversive contexts such as handling animal parts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A multilevel analysis of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) rights support across 77 countries: The role of contact and country laws.

Although intergroup contact reduces prejudice generally, there are growing calls to examine contextual factors in conjunction with contact. Such an approach benefits from more sophisticated analytic approaches, such as multilevel modelling, that take both the individual (Level-1) and their environment (Level-2) into account. Using this approach, we go beyond attitudes to assess both individual and contextual predictors of support for gay/lesbian and transgender rights. Using a sample of participants across 77 countries, results revealed that personal gay/lesbian contact (Level-1) and living in a country with more gay/lesbian rights (Level-2) predicted greater support for gay/lesbian rights (n = 71,991). Likewise, transgender contact and living in a country with more transgender rights predicted more support for transgender rights (n = 70,056). Cross-level interactions are also presented and discussed. Overall, findings highlight the importance of both individual and contextual factors in predicting support for LGBT communities.