It depends on how you look at it: being versus becoming mindsets determine responses to social comparisons.

The current studies examine how focusing on evaluation of the current self (a 'being' mindset) or focusing on the projection of future selves (a 'becoming mindset') influences responses to social comparison information. The studies show that the mindset of individuals, independent of other situational variables, determines whether individuals regard targets as threatening, how targets influence self-evaluations, and how targets affect performance on relevant tasks. The studies also show that mindsets determine what kinds of social comparison information are influential. In a becoming mindset, people are influenced mainly by information from domains that are considered mutable, whereas in a being mindset, people are influenced by information from both immutable and mutable domains.

Getting acquainted in interracial interactions: avoiding intimacy but approaching race.

It is important to understand the content dimensions that influence the quality of intergroup interactions. The present research organized potential conversation content according to theoretically relevant underlying dimensions and investigated Whites' willingness to discuss topics of varying content with a Black partner. Specifically, it investigated Whites' willingness to engage in intimate self-disclosure and their willingness to discuss controversial and race-related topics with White versus Black interaction partners. Results across two experiments indicated an unwillingness among Whites to discuss both intimate and race-related topics with a Black partner. In addition, this research examined the role played by participants in the interaction (i.e., asking vs. answering) and found that although Whites were unwilling to ask Black relative to White partners about race-related topics, they were more willing to answer Black relative to White partners about such topics.

No pain, no gain: the conditions under which upward comparisons lead to better performance.

In 3 studies, the authors explored the relation between threatening upward social comparisons and performance. In an initial study, participants were exposed to comparison targets who either threatened or boosted self-evaluations and then completed a performance task. Participants exposed to the threatening target performed better than those in a control group, whereas those exposed to the nonthreatening target performed worse. In Study 2, self-affirmation prior to comparison with threatening targets eliminated performance improvements. In Study 3, performance improvements were found only when the performance domain was different from the domain of success of the comparison target. These boundary conditions suggest that increases in performance following social comparison arise from individuals' motivations to maintain and repair self-evaluations. Implications for the study of the behavioral consequences of social comparison are discussed.

Sage on the Stage: Women's Representation at an Academic Conference.

Who presents at conferences matters. Presenting research benefits speakers, and presenters shape the conclusions audiences draw about who can succeed in a field. This is particularly important for members of historically underrepresented or disadvantaged groups, such as women. We investigated gender representation over a 13-year period among speakers at the largest social and personality psychology conference. On average, women were underrepresented as speakers, though this effect diminished over time. Chairs appeared to serve as gatekeepers: In symposia chaired by women, almost half of the invited speakers were women, whereas in symposia chaired by men, it was a third. The representation of women as speakers varied significantly by academic rank, with women underrepresented at lower ranks but not as full professors, and by topic. Women also tended to present with a smaller, less varied array of individuals than men, though this could be explained by women's lower average academic rank.

What We Talk About Matters: Content Moderates Cognitive Depletion in Interracial Interactions.

The antecedents and consequences of intergroup interactions have been well studied, but interaction content--what partners actually talk about--has not. In the experiment we report here, interaction content moderated well-documented self-regulation effects (i.e., cognitive depletion) among White participants interacting with a Black partner. Specifically, White individuals participated in a video email interaction with an ostensible Black or White partner who broached topics systematically varying in intimacy. Greater cognitive depletion was evident after interacting with a Black partner relative to a White partner, but only after discussing more intimate topics. When conversation topics aligned with Whites' preferences to avoid intimacy in interracial interactions, depletion effects were reduced. Thus, interaction content, which has been largely ignored in intergroup interaction research, has important implications for intergroup interaction.

Boasts are a boost: achievement prime self-reactivity predicts subsequent academic performance.

The present research tests the hypothesis that self-reactivity following an achievement prime reflects the strength of achievement goals and is a predictor of future goal-relevant performance. In Studies 1-3, undergraduates reported their grade-point averages (GPAs) following either an achievement goal prime or a control prime. Academic exaggeration (higher self-reported than official GPA) was the indicator of self-reactivity to the prime. Study 1 involved a direct achievement goal prime, whereas Studies 2 and 3 involved indirect priming techniques. In all 3 experiments, greater academic exaggeration following the achievement goal prime (but not the control prime) predicted better academic performance a semester later (based on official records). Study 4 demonstrated that the magnitude of students' GPA goals mediated the association between academic exaggeration and subsequent performance (1 year later). The fact that self-reactivity to a single achievement goal prime in the lab predicted later performance in "real life" suggests that individual differences in reactivity to a specific prime can signal much broader motivational orientations related to the primed goal.

Retraction Note to: Happiness as alchemy: Positive mood leads to self-serving responses to social comparisons.

[This retracts the article DOI: 10.1007/s11031-011-9216-y.].

Visual perspective influences the use of metacognitive information in temporal comparisons.

Four studies test the proposition that when people look back to past selves as a means of gauging current status, the visual perspective they assume determines the kind of information that they consider in making their judgments of change. In this way, visual perspective, coupled with the kind of change for which people are looking, determines how much change is perceived. The studies demonstrate that in the first-person perspective, experiential information is weighted more heavily than content information, whereas in the third-person perspective, the converse is true. In addition, the effects of perceived change on behavior are revealed, such that greater perceived positive change is associated with behaviors that are congruent with that change, whereas greater perceived negative change is associated with behaviors that are incongruent with that change. Theoretical implications, as well as implications for behavioral interventions, are discussed.

Unseen disadvantage: how American universities' focus on independence undermines the academic performance of first-generation college students.

American universities increasingly admit first-generation college students whose parents do not have 4-year degrees. Once admitted, these students tend to struggle academically, compared with continuing-generation students--students who have at least 1 parent with a 4-year degree. We propose a cultural mismatch theory that identifies 1 important source of this social class achievement gap. Four studies test the hypothesis that first-generation students underperform because interdependent norms from their mostly working-class backgrounds constitute a mismatch with middle-class independent norms prevalent in universities. First, assessing university cultural norms, surveys of university administrators revealed that American universities focus primarily on norms of independence. Second, identifying the hypothesized cultural mismatch, a longitudinal survey revealed that universities' focus on independence does not match first-generation students' relatively interdependent motives for attending college and that this cultural mismatch is associated with lower grades. Finally, 2 experiments at both private and public universities created a match or mismatch for first-generation students and examined the performance consequences. Together these studies revealed that representing the university culture in terms of independence (i.e., paving one's own paths) rendered academic tasks difficult and, thereby, undermined first-generation students' performance. Conversely, representing the university culture in terms of interdependence (i.e., being part of a community) reduced this sense of difficulty and eliminated the performance gap without adverse consequences for continuing-generation students. These studies address the urgent need to recognize cultural obstacles that contribute to the social class achievement gap and to develop interventions to address them.

When what you have is who you are: self-uncertainty leads individualists to see themselves in their possessions.

Four studies tested whether uncertainty about the self-concept can motivate people, particularly individualists who define themselves in terms of their personal traits and characteristics, to perceive their material possessions as extensions of themselves (i.e., as self-expressive). In Study 1, European American participants rated their favorite pair of blue jeans as more self-expressive after being induced to feel self-uncertain, whereas Asian American participants did not. In Study 2, participants who scored high on a measure of individualism rated their cars as more self-expressive following a self-uncertainty manipulation. In Study 3, individualists (but not collectivists) rated their favorite possessions as more self-expressive after being subject to self-uncertainty; a manipulation of self-irrelevant uncertainty did not produce these results. In Study 4, thinking about a self-expressive (relative to utilitarian) possession bolstered self-certainty among individualists, but not collectivists. Implications for research on culture, the self-concept, and possessions are discussed.

Happiness as alchemy: Positive mood leads to self-serving responses to social comparisons.

People in a positive mood process information in ways that reinforce and maintain this positive mood. The current studies examine how positive mood influences responses to social comparisons and demonstrates that people in a positive mood interpret ambiguous information about comparison others in self-benefitting ways. Specifically, four experiments demonstrate that compared to negative mood or neutral mood participants, participants in a positive mood engage in effortful re-interpretations of ambiguously similar comparison targets so that they may assimilate to upward comparison targets and contrast from downward comparison targets.