Devaluation by Omission: Limited Identity Options Elicit Anger and Increase Identification.

In the present research, we explored social-identity threat caused by subtle acts of omission, specifically situations in which social-identity information is requested but one's identity is not among the options provided. We predicted that being unable to identify with one's group-that is, in the demographics section of a survey-may signal social-identity devaluation, eliciting negative affect (e.g., anger) and increasing the importance of the omitted identity to group members' sense of self. Six preregistered experiments (N = 2,964 adults) sampling members of two minority-identity groups (i.e., gender minorities and members of a minority political party) support these predictions. Our findings document the existence of a subtle but likely pervasive form of social-identity threat.

Signaling Creative Genius: How Perceived Social Connectedness Influences Judgments of Creative Potential.

In today's knowledge economy, effectively signaling one's creative potential can be advantageous. Five experiments demonstrate that cues signaling a person's separateness from others (as opposed to social connectedness) boost evaluations of their creative potential. "Lone" targets-engaging in activities alone-were judged more likely to generate creative ideas compared with targets engaging in identical activities with others. This effect was explained by perceived social independence and was unique to creativity judgments-our manipulation did not influence perceptions of other positive attributes, including ability to generate practical ideas (Studies 1a and 1b). The effect of social independence on perceived creativity was not reducible to perceived nonnormativity and was attenuated when creativity was construed as requiring convergent thinking rather than divergent thinking (Studies 2-4). Findings advance our understanding of how individuals of varying degrees of social connectedness tend to be viewed by others, providing insight into observers' lay beliefs about creative potential.

The role of stress mindset in shaping cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to challenging and threatening stress.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Prior research suggests that altering situation-specific evaluations of stress as challenging versus threatening can improve responses to stress. The aim of the current study was to explore whether cognitive, physiological and affective stress responses can be altered independent of situation-specific evaluations by changing individuals' mindsets about the nature of stress in general. DESIGN: Using a 2 × 2 design, we experimentally manipulated stress mindset using multi-media film clips orienting participants (N = 113) to either the enhancing or debilitating nature of stress. We also manipulated challenge and threat evaluations by providing positive or negative feedback to participants during a social stress test. RESULTS: Results revealed that under both threat and challenge stress evaluations, a stress-is-enhancing mindset produced sharper increases in anabolic ("growth") hormones relative to a stress-is-debilitating mindset. Furthermore, when the stress was evaluated as a challenge, a stress-is-enhancing mindset produced sharper increases in positive affect, heightened attentional bias towards positive stimuli, and greater cognitive flexibility, whereas a stress-is-debilitating mindset produced worse cognitive and affective outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: These findings advance stress management theory and practice by demonstrating that a short manipulation designed to generate a stress-is-enhancing mindset can improve responses to both challenging and threatening stress.