Causal effects of point-of-sale cigarette promotions and subjective social status on cigarette craving: a randomised within-person experiment.

BACKGROUND: Cigarette smoking continues to be a leading cause of preventable deaths in the USA, in part because the USA has not adopted the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. One way the tobacco industry counteracts tobacco control policies is by heavily advertising cigarettes at the point of sale in retailers (eg, at the cash register) and by offering discounts on cigarettes. DESIGN: A within-subject experimental design with adults who smoke cigarettes daily (n=281) investigated whether: (1) exposure to images of cigarette promotions in an online experiment is associated with greater cigarette craving relative to viewing images of non-smoking cues, and (2) if exposure to images of point-of-sale cigarette promotions with a discount (vs without) increases cigarette craving. The study also examined how participants' subjective social status (compared with others in the USA) relates to cigarette craving after exposure to images of cigarette promotions with and without a discount. RESULTS: In an online experiment, exposure to images of smoking cues, including point-of-sale cigarette promotions, elicited greater craving relative to non-smoking cues (all p<0.001). In addition, images of promotions with a discount elicited higher levels of craving compared with those without a discount (b=0.09, p=0.001). Although participants with a higher (vs lower) subjective social status craved cigarettes less overall (b=-0.12, p=0.012), there was no difference in their craving between images of promotions with and without a discount, while craving was higher for images of promotions with a discount than without for participants with higher subjective social status (b=0.06, p=0.021). CONCLUSION: Viewing images of point-of-sale cigarette promotions can causally increase cravings to smoke, which may also apply to real-world retail settings that display cigarette promotions. Restricting point-of-sale promotions generally, and discounts specifically, could help reduce cigarette smoking and address tobacco use disparities in the USA.

Distrust as a form of inequality.

Navigating social hierarchies is a ubiquitous aspect of human life. Social status shapes our thoughts, feelings, and actions toward others in various ways. However, it remains unclear how trust is conferred within hierarchies and how status-related cues are used when resources are on the line. This research fills this knowledge gap by examining how ascribed, consensus-based status appearance, and perceived status appearance impact investment decisions for high- and low-status partners during a Trust Game. In a series of pre-registered experiments, we examined the degree to which participants trusted unfamiliar others with financial investments when the only available information about that person was their socioeconomic status (SES). In Study 1, SES was ascribed. Studies 2 and 3 conveyed SES with visual antecedents (clothing). Across all three experiments, participants trusted high SES partners more than low SES partners. In addition, subjective perceptions of status based on visual cues were a stronger predictor of trust than consensus-based status judgments. This work highlights a high status-trust bias for decisions where an individual's money is on the line. In addition, high-status trust bias may occur simply because of an individual's subjective assumptions about another's rank.

Social-Cognitive and Affective Antecedents of Code Switching and the Consequences of Linguistic Racism for Black People and People of Color.

Linguistic racism shapes the psychological antecedents of code switching and its consequences for Black people and other people of color. We highlight mentalizing as an antecedent of code switching. We posit that stereotype threat arises in contexts where racism is salient, prompting scrutiny of others' mental states (i.e., mentalizing) when making choices about linguistic self-presentation. Additionally, we posit that sustained appraisals of stereotype threat add cognitive load and reinforce self-protective code switching. We highlight potential consequences of linguistic racism for Black people and other people of color, including reduced opportunities for authentic self-presentation, increased emotional effort, and stress. Finally, we outline paths forward for research and practice: (1) recognizing the heterogeneity of language and thereby reducing linguistic racism, (2) implementing changes that promote racially affirming environments that reduce demands for self-protective code switching, and (3) adapting and creating scalable psychometric tools to measure linguistic choices and linguistic racism.

Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation.

From social media to courts of law, recordings of interracial police officer-civilian interactions are now widespread and publicly available. People may be motivated to preferentially understand the dynamics of these interactions when they perceive injustice towards those whose communities experience disproportionate policing relative to others (e.g., non-White racial/ethnic groups). To explore these questions, two studies were conducted (study 1 neuroimaging n = 69 and study 2 behavioral n = 58). The fMRI study examined White participants' neural activity when viewing real-world videos with varying degrees of aggression or conflict of White officers arresting a Black or White civilian. Activity in brain regions supporting social cognition was greater when viewing Black (vs. White) civilians involved in more aggressive police encounters. Additionally, although an independent sample of perceivers rated videos featuring Black and White civilians as similar in overall levels of aggression when civilian race was obscured, participants in the fMRI study (where race was not obscured) rated officers as more aggressive and their use of force as less legitimate when the civilian was Black. In study 2, participants who had not viewed the videos also reported that they believe police are generally more unjustly aggressive towards Black compared with White civilians. These findings inform our understanding of how perceptions of conflict with the potential for injustice shape social cognitive engagement when viewing arrests of Black and White individuals by White police officers.

Social justice neuroscience, a valuable and complex endeavor: Authors' reply to commentaries on "Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation".

In commentaries about our article, "Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation" (Dang et al., 2022), Harris (2022), Niv and Kardosh (2022), and Purdie-Greenway and Spagna (2022) made suggestions to increase the generalizability of future research on this topic and cautioned about misinterpretation of the obtained findings. We agree with their assessments, noting that this emerging program of research should be extended to different populations and stimuli. We conclude with a general discussion of the benefits and challenges associated with multidisciplinary research and share our thoughts about engaging in social justice neuroscience.

Using first-person narratives about healthcare workers and people who are incarcerated to motivate helping behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

RATIONAL: Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires large-scale cooperation and behavior change on an unprecedented scale. Individuals can help reduce the burden of the pandemic by participating in behaviors that benefit people whose life circumstances make them especially vulnerable. OBJECTIVE: We tested the effect of reading narrative (i.e., story-like) as opposed to expository (i.e., factual recounting) messages on beliefs about protecting others in groups vulnerable during the pandemic through increased message transportation (i.e. immersing the reader into the story). Additionally, we examined if reading narratives, as opposed to expository messages, increased intentions to engage in prosocial behaviors that benefit these groups through increased transportation. METHODS: The study used a between-subjects design where participants either read narrative or expository messages about the experiences of people who were at greater exposure to SARS-CoV-2 due to social and political factors, namely people who were incarcerated or working in healthcare during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: In line with pre-registered hypotheses, participants in the narrative (vs. expository) condition reported greater transportation into the message. We also observed indirect effects of narrative (vs. expository) messages, through increased message transportation, on: (1) beliefs that by physical distancing, one can protect vulnerable people (2) beliefs that members of the target groups (i.e., healthcare workers and people who are incarcerated), were vulnerable during the pandemic, (3) intentions to engage in prosocial behaviors that help family and friends, and (4) intentions to engage in prosocial behaviors that help members of vulnerable groups. CONCLUSION: Together these results suggest that narratives can be used to motivate prosocial action during the COVID-19 pandemic to the extent that the narratives elicit transportation.

Regional and network neural activity reflect men's preference for greater socioeconomic status during impression formation.

Evidence from social psychology suggests that men compared to women more readily display and pursue control over human resources or capital. However, studying how status and gender shape deliberate impression formation is difficult due to social desirability concerns. Using univariate and multivariate fMRI analyses (n = 65), we examined how gender and socioeconomic status (SES) may influence brain responses during deliberate but private impression formation. Men more than women showed greater activity in the VMPFC and NAcc when forming impressions of high-SES (vs. low-SES) targets. Seed partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that this SES-based increase in VMPFC activity was associated with greater co-activation across an evaluative network for the high-SES versus low-SES univariate comparison. A data-driven task PLS analysis also showed greater co-activation in an extended network consisting of regions involved in salience detection, attention, and task engagement as a function of increasing target SES. This co-activating network was most pronounced for men. These findings provide evidence that high-SES targets elicit neural responses indicative of positivity, reward, and salience during impression formation among men. Contributions to a network neuroscience understanding of status perception and implications for gender- and status-based impression formation are discussed.

A registered report on how implicit pro-rich bias is shaped by the perceiver's gender and socioeconomic status.

Although high status is often considered a desirable quality, this may not always be the case. Different factors may moderate the value of high status along a dimension such as wealth (e.g. gender, perceiver income/education). For example, studies suggest men may value wealth and control over resources more than women. This may be especially true for high-income men who already have control over substantial resources. Other work suggests that low-income men and women may have different experiences in educational contexts compared to their richer peers who dominate norms at higher levels of education. These experiences may potentially lead to different attitudes about the wealthy among low-income men and women. In this registered report, we proposed two key predictions based on our review of the literature and analyses of pilot data from the Attitudes, Identities and Individual Differences (AIID) study (n = 767): (H1) increasing income will be associated with increased pro-wealthy bias for men more than for women and (H2) income will also moderate the effect of education on implicit pro-wealthy bias, depending on gender. Overall, men showed greater implicit pro-wealthy bias than did women. However, neither of our hypotheses that income would moderate the effects of gender on implicit pro-wealthy bias were supported. These findings suggest implicit pro-wealthy bias among men and are discussed in the context of exploratory analyses of gender differences in self-reported beliefs and attitudes about the rich and the poor.

Punishing the privileged: Selfish offers from high-status allocators elicit greater punishment from third-party arbitrators.

Individuals high in socioeconomic status (SES) are often viewed as valuable members of society. However, the appeal of high-SES people exists in tension with our aversion to inequity. Little experimental work has directly examined how people rectify inequitable distributions between two individuals varying in SES. The objective of the present study was to examine how disinterested third parties adjudicate inequity in the context of concrete financial allocations between a selfish allocator and a recipient who was the victim of the allocator's selfish offer. Specifically, this study focused on whether knowing the SES of the victim or the allocator affected the participant's decisions to punish the selfish allocator. In two experiments (N = 999), participants completed a modified third-party Ultimatum Game in which they arbitrated inequitable exchanges between an allocator and a recipient. Although participants generally preferred to redistribute inequitable exchanges without punishing players who made unfair allocations, we observed an increased preference for punitive solutions as offers became increasingly selfish. This tendency was especially pronounced when the victim was low in SES or when the perpetrator was high in SES, suggesting a tendency to favor the disadvantaged even among participants reporting high subjective SES. Finally, punitive responses were especially likely when the context emphasized the allocator's privileged status rather than the recipient's underprivileged status. These findings inform our understanding of how SES biases retributive justice even in non-judicial contexts that minimize the salience of punishment.

Implicit Evaluative Biases Toward Targets Varying in Race and Socioeconomic Status.

Generally, White (vs. Black) and high-status (vs. low-status) individuals are rated positively. However, implicit evaluations of simultaneously perceived race and socioeconomic status (SES) remain to be considered. Across four experiments, participants completed an evaluative priming task with face primes orthogonally varying in race (Black vs. White) and SES (low vs. high). Following initial evidence of a positive implicit bias for high-SES (vs. low-SES) primes, subsequent experiments revealed that this bias is sensitive to target race, particularly when race and SES antecedents are presented in an integrated fashion. Specifically, high-SES positive bias was more reliable for White than for Black targets. Additional analyses examining how implicit biases may be sensitive to perceiver characteristics such as race, SES, and beliefs about socioeconomic mobility are also discussed. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of examining evaluations based on race and SES when antecedents of both categories are simultaneously available.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is particularly responsive to social evaluations requiring the use of person-knowledge.

Humans can rely on diverse sources of information to evaluate others, including knowledge (e.g., occupation, likes and dislikes, education, etc.) and perceptual cues (e.g., attractiveness, race, etc.). Previous research has identified brain regions supporting person evaluations, but are evaluations based on perceptual cues versus person-knowledge processed differently? Moreover, are neural responses consistent when person-knowledge is available but unnecessary for the evaluation? This fMRI study examined how the use and availability of person-knowledge shapes the neural underpinnings of social evaluations. Participants evaluated well-known actors based on attractiveness or body of work (i.e., person-knowledge) and unknown models based on attractiveness only. Analyses focused on the VMPFC, following research implicating this region in positive evaluations based on person-knowledge. The VMPFC was sensitive to the (1) availability of person-knowledge, showing greater responses as ratings became more positive for actors (but not models) regardless of rating dimension and (2) use of available person-knowledge, showing greater activity as ratings for likability based on body of work became more positive for actors versus models rated on attractiveness. These findings indicate that although brain regions supporting person evaluation are sensitive to the availability to person-knowledge, they are even more responsive when judgments require the use of available person-knowledge.

Motivation Modulates Brain Networks in Response to Faces Varying in Race and Status: A Multivariate Approach.

Previous behavioral and neuroimaging work indicates that individuals who are externally motivated to respond without racial prejudice tend not to spontaneously regulate their prejudice and prefer to focus on nonracial attributes when evaluating others. This fMRI multivariate analysis used partial least squares analysis to examine the distributed neural processing of race and a relevant but ostensibly nonracial attribute (i.e., socioeconomic status) as a function of the perceiver's external motivation. Sixty-one white male participants (Homo sapiens) privately formed impressions of black and white male faces ascribed with high or low status. Across all conditions, greater external motivation was associated with reduced coactivation of brain regions believed to support emotion regulation (rostral anterior cingulate cortex), introspection (middle cingulate), and social cognition (temporal pole, medial prefrontal cortex). The reduced involvement of this network irrespective of target race and status suggests that external motivation is related to the participant's overall approach to impression formation in an interracial context. The findings highlight the importance of examining network coactivation in understanding the role of external motivation in impression formation, among other interracial social processes.

The social neuroscience of race-based and status-based prejudice.

The largely independent neuroscience literatures on race and status show increasingly that both constructs shape how we evaluate others. Following an overview and comparison of both literatures, we suggest that apparent differences in the brain regions supporting race-based and status-based evaluations may tap into distinct components of a common evaluative network. For example, perceiver motivations and/or category cues (e.g., perceptual vs. knowledge-based) can differ depending on whether one is processing race and/or status, ultimately recruiting distinct mechanisms within this common evaluative network. We emphasize the generalizability of this social neuroscience framework for dimensions beyond race and status and highlight how this framework raises new questions in the study of prejudice-reduction interventions.

External motivation to avoid prejudice alters neural responses to targets varying in race and status.

Those who are high in external motivation to respond without prejudice (EMS) tend to focus on non-racial attributes when describing others. This fMRI study examined the neural processing of race and an alternative yet stereotypically relevant attribute (viz., socioeconomic status: SES) as a function of the perceiver's EMS. Sixty-one White participants privately formed impressions of Black and White faces ascribed with high or low SES. Analyses focused on regions supporting race- and status-based reward/salience (NAcc), evaluation (VMPFC) and threat/relevance (amygdala). Consistent with previous findings from the literature on status-based evaluation, we observed greater neural responses to high-status (vs low-status) targets in all regions of interest when participants were relatively low in EMS. In contrast, we observed the opposite pattern when participants were relatively high in EMS. Notably, all effects were independent of target race. In summary, White perceivers' race-related motivations similarly altered their neural responses to the SES of Black and White targets. Specifically, the findings suggest that EMS may attenuate the positive value and/or salience of high status in a mixed-race context. Findings are discussed in the context of the stereotypic relationship between race and SES.

How Social Status Shapes Person Perception and Evaluation: A Social Neuroscience Perspective.

Inferring the relative rank (i.e., status) of others is essential to navigating social hierarchies. A survey of the expanding social psychological and neuroscience literatures on status reveals a diversity of focuses (e.g., perceiver vs. agent), operationalizations (e.g., status as dominance vs. wealth), and methodologies (e.g., behavioral, neuroscientific). Accommodating this burgeoning literature on status in person perception, the present review offers a novel social neuroscientific framework that integrates existing work with theoretical clarity. This framework distinguishes between five key concepts: (1) strategic pathways to status acquisition for agents, (2) status antecedents (i.e., perceptual and knowledge-based cues that confer status rank), (3) status dimensions (i.e., domains in which an individual may be ranked, such as wealth), (4) status level (i.e., one's rank along a given dimension), and (5) the relative importance of a given status dimension, dependent on perceiver and context characteristics. Against the backdrop of this framework, we review multiple dimensions of status in the nonhuman and human primate literatures. We then review the behavioral and neuroscientific literatures on the consequences of perceived status for attention and evaluation. Finally, after proposing a social neuroscience framework, we highlight innovative directions for future social status research in social psychology and neuroscience.

Prioritization of self-relevant perspectives in ageing.

This study investigated whether age-related sensitivity to self-relevance may benefit perspective taking, despite generally poorer perspective-taking capacity in older adults. In one perceptual matching task and two visual perspective-taking paradigms, we examined age differences in sensitivity to avatars representing self and other. In the matching task, older (60-83 years) and younger (18-20 years) adults were similarly biased toward the self- versus other-associated avatar. In the perspective-taking tasks, participants viewed these avatars within a virtual room. Task-relevant perspectives were either the same (i.e., congruent) or different (i.e., incongruent). In the 3PP-3PP task, both avatars were present, and participants adopted the perspective of one or the other. As in the matching task, young and old were similarly biased toward the self-associated avatar. However, age differences emerged in the 1PP-3PP task, which presented only one avatar per trial (varying between self and other), and participants responded based on their own first-person perspective or the avatar's. In summary, age modulated the ability to take perspectives primarily when participants' own first-person perspective was task relevant. Relative to younger adults, older adults prioritized the self (vs. other) avatar more during initial perspective computation and the first-person (vs. third-person) perspective more when selecting between incongruent perspectives.

Empathy and visual perspective-taking performance.

This study examined the extent to which visual perspective-taking performance is modulated by trait-level empathy. Participants completed a third-person visual perspective-taking task in which they judged the perspectives of two simultaneously presented avatars, designated "Self" and "Other." Depending on the trial, these avatars either held the same view (i.e., congruent) or a different view (i.e., incongruent). Analyses focused on the relationship between empathy and two perspective-taking phenomena: Selection between competing perspectives (i.e., perspective-congruence effects) and prioritization of the Self avatar's perspective. Empathy was related to improved overall performance on this task and a reduced cost of selecting between conflicting perspectives (i.e., smaller perspective-congruence effects). This effect was asymmetric, with empathy (i.e., empathic concern) levels predicting reduced interference from a conflicting perspective, especially when adopting the Self (vs. Other) avatar's perspective. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of the self-other distinction and mental flexibility components of empathy.

Relevance, valence, and the self-attention network.

Consistent with the authors' suggestions for research on extensions beyond the self (e.g., to joint attention and group-related processes), we offer the hypothesis that the Self-Attention Network may facilitate attention to any person who is construed as similar to the self along key dimensions. On the basis of existing literature and our recent findings, we focus on the dimensions of personal relevance and valence. Further research on how these dimensions mediate attention to self and others has the potential to unify separate lines of research on the neural representation of self and others (i.e., social cognition).