Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries.

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.

Prepare to Compare: Effects of an Intervention Involving Upward and Downward Social Comparisons on Goal Pursuit in Daily Life.

In a preregistered ecological momentary intervention study, we alternately instructed participants to adopt an upward and downward comparison focus. In all, 349 participants reported 8,137 social comparison situations across 6 days and three comparison conditions (baseline, upward, downward). For each comparison, participants reported social comparison direction, motivation, effort intentions, and emotions in five daily reports and one daily end-of-day summary. As predicted, an upward comparison focus resulted in more self-improvement motivation (pushing) and more negative emotions, whereas days with a downward comparison focus resulted in decreased motivation (coasting) but more positive emotions (vs. baseline). However, at the end of the day, people experienced lower goal approach on upward but higher goal approach on downward comparison days. Hence, engaging in strategic upward comparison was motivating in the short term but resulted in surprisingly opposite effects at the end of the day. We offer possible explanations from cognitive and motivational perspectives.

On the emergence of the in-out effect across trials: two items do the trick.

Individuals prefer letter strings whose consonantal articulation spots move from the front of the mouth to the back (e.g., BAKA, inward) over those with a reversed consonant order (e.g., KABA, outward), the so-called in-out effect. The present research explores whether individuals hold an internal standard or scheme of consonant order that triggers this effect. If this were the case, the in-out effect should already occur in one-trial between-subjects designs. If not, the in-out effect should emerge over the course of trials in within-subjects designs. In Experiments 1a-e (1b-e preregistered; total N = 2973; German, English, and Portuguese samples) employing a one-trial between-subjects design, no in-out effect was found. In Experiment 2 (N = 253), employing within-subjects designs with either 1, 5, 10, 30, or 50 trials per consonant order category (inward vs. outward), the in-out effect was absent in the first trial, but already surfaced for the first 2 trials, reached significance within the first 10 trials and a solid plateau within the first 20 trials. Of the four theoretical explanations, the present evidence favors the fluency/frequency and letter-position accounts and is at odds with the eating-related embodiment and easy-first accounts.

How health message framing and targets affect distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: Maintaining safe physical distance is paramount to slowing the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)/coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), particularly indoors (e.g., while shopping). We used a health message intervention to motivate grocery store customers to engage in distancing behavior. METHOD: In an online experiment (N = 206) and a field experiment (N = 268; preregistered on OSF), we used a 2 × 2 between-subjects design and manipulated health messages (a) as gain-framed ("to foster health") versus loss-framed ("it could be deadly") and (b) as targeting different beneficiaries (customers themselves versus fellow citizens). In the field experiment, observers rated customers' distancing behavior during a random confederate encounter and a subsequent interview. We assessed customers' perceptions of risk and worry, perspective-taking, and state optimism as concurrent psychological processes to investigate customers' distancing behavior in correlational mediation analyses. RESULTS: Contrary to previous research, the intervention was more effective when pertaining to customers themselves than to their fellow citizens (Experiments 1-2). In addition, loss-framed messages were more effective than gain-framed ones (Experiment 2). The former behavioral effect was accompanied (and statistically mediated) by a concurrent psychological increase in customers' perceived risk and worry. CONCLUSIONS: Owing to their low cost and easy implementation, health messages constitute a promising means to promote physical distancing. Our results show that their effectiveness significantly depends on the framing and target of the health behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How Much Do Severely Injured Athletes Experience Sport Injury-Related Growth? Contrasting Psychological, Situational, and Demographic Predictors.

Sport injury-related growth (SIRG) describes the possibility for athletes to benefit psychologically from an injury. The present, preregistered online study examined an international sample of 335 athletes with impressive athletic biographies who sustained a severe sport-related injury. Expanding the extant literature, we empirically contrasted numerous psychological, situational, and demographic predictors of perceived SIRG-specifically, athletes' optimism, coping style, self-efficacy, athletic identity, social support, need satisfaction, and injury centrality. Our data first provide empirical evidence for perceived SIRG, even when statistically controlling for a potential social-desirability bias in athletes' responses. In addition, frequentist and Bayesian regression analyses showed that several psychological variables predicted perceived SIRG-particularly athletes' informational social support, positive reframing, optimism, and injury centrality. Finally, post hoc mediation analyses showed how these psychological variables account for different levels of perceived SIRG as a function of demographic variables. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, along with directions for future research.

How individuals react emotionally to others' (mis)fortunes: A social comparison framework.

When confronted with others' fortunes and misfortunes, emotional reactions can take various forms-ranging from assimilative (happy-for-ness, sympathy) to contrastive emotions (envy, schadenfreude) and from prosocial (reward) to antisocial behavior (punish). We systematically tested how social comparisons shape reactions to others' (mis)fortunes with a newly developed paradigm with which we investigated envy, happy-for-ness, schadenfreude, and sympathy in a joint rigorous experimental setup, along with individuals' ensuing behavioral reactions. In nine experiments (Ntotal = 1,827), (a) participants' rankings on a comparison dimension relative to other people and (b) others' (mis)fortunes (changes in relative rankings) jointly determined how much individuals experienced the emotions. Upward comparisons increased envy and schadenfreude, and downward comparisons increased sympathy and happy-for-ness, relative to lateral comparisons. When the relevance of comparison standards (Experiment 4a) or the comparison domain (Experiment 4b) was low, or when participants did not have their own reference point for comparison (Experiment 4c), the effect of comparison direction on emotions was attenuated. Emotions also predicted the ensuing behavior: Envy and schadenfreude predicted less, whereas happy-for-ness and sympathy predicted more prosocial behavior (Experiments 5 and 6). Overall, the strongest social comparison effects occurred for envy and sympathy, followed by schadenfreude and happy-for-ness. The data suggest that envy and sympathy arise when comparative concerns are threatened, and happy-for-ness and schadenfreude arise when they are satisfied (because inequality increases vs. decreases, respectively) and predict behavior aimed at dealing with these concerns. We discuss implications for the function of fortunes-of-others emotions, social comparison theory, inequity aversion, and prospect theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The Power and Peril of Precise vs. Round Health Message Interventions to Increase Stair Use.

Taking the stairs vs. an elevator generate benefits for the individual by increasing overall physical activity, health, and wellbeing. In the present paper, we report two pre-registered field intervention studies that examine how health message interventions can motivate individuals to change their behavior. We empirically contrasted opposing predictions from the literature as to whether numerically round (60.00%) or precise (61.87%) health messages are more effective in causing people to use the stairs over taking the elevator. Both interventions were compared to a control condition (no-health message). Contrary to our hypotheses and extant findings, both intervention studies did not produce a significant positive effect of the interventions relative to the control condition. In recent years such null findings have received increasingly more appreciation, particularly in the light of evident downsides of file-drawered studies. We discuss a number of moderating factors that may determine when and why nudging interventions are (in-) effective (e.g., a priori behavioral prevalence, pre-established habits, ceiling effects, and building infrastructure), as well as limitations and avenues for future research.

Front in the mouth, front in the word: The driving mechanisms of the in-out effect.

Words for which the consonantal articulation spots wander from the front to the back of the mouth (inward) elicit more positive attitudes than words with the reversed order (outward). The present article questions the common theoretical explanation of this effect, namely an association between articulation movements and oral movements during ingestion and expectoration (inward resembles eating which is positive; outward resembles spitting which is negative). In 4 experiments (total N = 468), we consistently replicated the basic in-out effect; but no evidence was found supporting an eating-related underlying mechanism. The in-out effect was not modulated by disgust inductions (Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 10) or food deprivation (Experiment 3). In 6 further experiments (total N = 1,067), we explored a novel alternative explanation, namely that the in-out effect is simply a position-specific preference for front consonants over back consonants. In these experiments, we found in-out-like preference effects for fragments that lacked an actual front-to-back movement but featured only starting (e.g., B _ _ _ _) or ending (e.g., _ _ _ K) consonants (Experiments 6-8). Consonants that are articulated in the front of the mouth were generally preferred over those articulated in the back of the mouth, and this basic preference was stronger at the beginning of a word-like stimulus (Experiments 6-10), thus explaining the preference pattern of the in-out effect. The present evidence speaks against an eating-related (embodied) explanation and suggests a simple word-morphologic explanation of the in-out effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Affective startle modulation and psychopathology: Implications for appetitive and defensive brain systems.

Startle reflex potentiation versus startle attenuation to unpleasant versus pleasant stimuli likely reflect priming of the defensive versus appetitive motivational systems, respectively. This review summarizes and systemizes the literature on affective startle modulation related to psychopathologies with the aim to reveal underlying mechanisms across psychopathologies. We found evidence for psychopathologies characterized by increased startle potentiation to unpleasant stimuli (anxiety disorders), decreased startle potentiation to unpleasant stimuli (psychopathy), decreased startle attenuation to pleasant stimuli (ADHD), as well as a general hyporeactivity to affective stimuli (depression). Increased versus decreased startle responses to disorder-specific stimuli characterize specific phobia and drug dependence. No psychopathology is characterized by increased startle attenuation to standard pleasant stimuli or a general hyperreactivity to affective stimuli. This review indicates that the defensive and the appetitive systems operate independently mostly in accordance with the motivational priming hypothesis and that affective startle modulation is a highly valuable paradigm to unraveling dysfunctions of the defensive and appetitive systems in psychopathologies as requested by the Research Domain Criteria initiative.

Schadenfreude as social-functional dominance regulator.

Schadenfreude follows from misfortunes happening to other individuals. It is therefore an essentially social emotion. However, previous research has mainly explored its intrapersonal functions. Complementing these findings, we propose a social-functional approach to schadenfreude. Seven studies (total N = 2,362) support that (a) schadenfreude is a reaction to a misfortune befalling an initially dominance-displaying individual and (b) the public expression of schadenfreude downregulates the dominance of the other person. Specifically, schadenfreude toward initially successful persons was intensified when they displayed dominance (i.e., hubristic pride or general dominance) instead of prestige (i.e., authentic pride or general prestige) or other displays (i.e., embarrassment) following their achievement (Studies 1 to 3). This effect was mediated via inferiors' malicious envy (Study 4). The public expression of schadenfreude then reduced the perceived dominance of the initially successful person compared with private expressions of schadenfreude and awkward silence (Studies 5 and 6). This dominance reduction further had downstream consequences for the superior person (Study 7). The findings underline the social functioning of schadenfreude and provide avenues for research on schadenfreude at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Matching between oral inward-outward movements of object names and oral movements associated with denoted objects.

In eight experiments, we explored matching effects between oral approach-avoidance movements triggered by word articulation and meaning of the objects the words denoted. Participants (total N = 1264) rated their liking for words that featured consonantal muscle stricture spots either wandering inwards (e.g., BODIKA, resembling ingestion movements) or outwards (e.g., KODIBA, resembling expectoration movements). These words were labelled as names for various objects. For objects the use of which entails ingestive oral actions (lemonade and mouthwash) inward words were preferred over outward words. For objects that trigger expectorative oral actions (toxical chemical, pill, and bubble gum) this preference was attenuated or even reversed (outward words were liked more than inward). Valence of the denoted object did not play a role in these modulations. Thus, the sagittal direction of mouth movements during silent reading meaningfully interacted with direction of oral actions associated with the denoted objects.

Minimal conditions of motor inductions of approach-avoidance states: The case of oral movements.

The minimal conditions to elicit affective responses via approach-avoidance movements were explored by using oral movements (total N = 1,363). To induce oral movements, words were construed whose consonants (and vowels) wandered either from front to back of the mouth (e.g., PEKA, inward, like swallowing, approach) or from back to front (e.g., KEPA, outward, like spitting, avoidance). Participants preferred inward over outward consonant wanderings when reading only 2 phonemes (e.g., PEKA vs. KEPA), single letters (e.g., PK vs. KP), and even when only listening to a speaker uttering such stimuli (Experiments 1-4). Vowel wanderings had no systematic effect. The larger the consonantal inward and outward jumps, irrespective from where they started in the mouth, the stronger was their affective impact (Experiments 6-7). Visual presentation of words generally evoked stronger in-out effects than listening to a speaker uttering the words, which speaks against a sound symbolism explanation. Informing theorizing also on the much more common manual approach-avoidance inductions, these findings show that approach-avoidance movements can elicit affect by activating only the starting and ending point of a spatial movement gradient, even involving differing muscles for these spots, respectively. Also, the present findings imply that the magnitude of the distance of the spatial approach-avoidance gradient matters (the larger the distance, the larger the affective response), and that such effects can be induced by mere observation (by only listening to a speaker). (PsycINFO Database Record

Mouth-watering words: Articulatory inductions of eating-like mouth movements increase perceived food palatability.

We explored the impact of consonantal articulation direction of names for foods on expected palatability for these foods (total N = 256). Dishes (Experiments 1-2) and food items (Experiment 3) were labeled with names whose consonants either wandered from the front to the back of the mouth (inward, e.g., PASOKI) or from the back to the front of the mouth (outward; e.g., KASOPI). Because inward (outward) wandering consonant sequences trigger eating-like (expectoration-like) mouth movements, dishes and foods were rated higher in palatability when they bore an inward compared to an outward wandering name. This effect occurred already under silent reading and for hungry and satiated participants alike. As a boundary condition, this articulation effect did occur when also additional visual information on the product was given (Experiment 3), but vanished when this visual information was too vivid and rich in competing palatability cues (Experiment 2). Future marketing can exploit this effect by increasing the appeal of food products by using inward wandering brand names, that is, names that start with the lips and end in the throat.

The face of schadenfreude: Differentiation of joy and schadenfreude by electromyography.

The present study investigated whether the facial expression of the social emotion schadenfreude, the pleasant emotion which arises in response to another's misfortune, can be differentiated from the facial expression of joy. Schadenfreude was induced by videos displaying unsuccessful penalty shots of Dutch soccer players and joy by successful penalty shots of German soccer players. Thirty-two participants watched videos while the activity of four facial muscles was recorded electromyographically. Furthermore, they judged each stimulus according to valence, arousal, joy, schadenfreude and sadness. Electromyography (EMG) results revealed that schadenfreude expressions did not differ from joy with regard to involved muscles (increase of Musculus zygomaticus major and M. orbicularis oculi activity, decrease of M. corrugator supercilii activity, no activity change of M. frontalis medialis). Furthermore, facial reactions developed fast in both conditions and EMG indicated stronger reactions in the schadenfreude condition, but according to ratings participants felt more pleasure in the joy condition.