Extraverts Reap Greater Social Rewards From Passion Because They Express Passion More Frequently and More Diversely.

Passion is stereotypically expressed through animated facial expressions, energetic body movements, varied tone, and pitch-and met with interpersonal benefits. However, these capture only a subset of passion expressions that are more common for extraverts. Indeed, in an initial dyadic study of supervisors and their subordinates (N = 330), extraverts expressed their passion more strongly through these stereotypical expressions of passion, and observers perceived extraverts as more passionate than introverts. Across three studies (Ntotal = 1,373), we subsequently developed a more comprehensive passion expressions and behaviors scale (PEBS). Using this measure in a daily diary study (N = 206, k = 1,862), we found that extraverts not only expressed their passion in more stereotypical ways, but through a broader variety of expressions in general. Extraverts are perceived as more passionate because they have a broader behavioral repertoire, express their passion more frequently and diversely, and thereby attain greater interpersonal rewards.

Measuring inequality beyond the Gini coefficient may clarify conflicting findings.

Prior research has found mixed results on how economic inequality is related to various outcomes. These contradicting findings may in part stem from a predominant focus on the Gini coefficient, which only narrowly captures inequality. Here, we conceptualize the measurement of inequality as a data reduction task of income distributions. Using a uniquely fine-grained dataset of N = 3,056 US county-level income distributions, we estimate the fit of 17 previously proposed models and find that multi-parameter models consistently outperform single-parameter models (i.e., models that represent single-parameter measures like the Gini coefficient). Subsequent simulations reveal that the best-fitting model-the two-parameter Ortega model-distinguishes between inequality concentrated at lower- versus top-income percentiles. When applied to 100 policy outcomes from a range of fields (including health, crime and social mobility), the two Ortega parameters frequently provide directionally and magnitudinally different correlations than the Gini coefficient. Our findings highlight the importance of multi-parameter models and data-driven methods to study inequality.

Revisiting extraversion and leadership emergence: A social network churn perspective.

One of the classic relationships in personality psychology is that extraversion is associated with emerging as an informal leader. However, recent findings raise questions about the longevity of extraverted individuals as emergent leaders. Here, we adopt a social network churn perspective to study the number of people entering, remaining in, and leaving the leadership networks of individuals over time. We propose that extraverted individuals endure as emergent leaders in networks over time, but experience significant changes in the people being led, including the loss of people who once considered them a leader but now no longer do. In Study 1 (N = 545), extraverted individuals had a larger number of new and remaining people in their leadership networks, but also lost more people, above and beyond differences in initial leadership network size. In Study 2 (N = 764), we replicated and extended these results in an organizational sample while controlling for alternative explanations such as formal rank, network size, self-monitoring, and narcissism. Extraversion predicted the number of people entering, remaining in, and leaving leadership networks over time. Our findings suggest that while extraverted individuals tend to emerge as leaders, they are also more likely to experience greater network churn-they tend to lead different people over time and leave people in their wake who once perceived them a leader but now no longer do. We discuss the challenges posed by this network churn perspective for extraverted emergent leaders and highlight its importance for our understanding of extraversion and emergent leadership. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Global Behaviors, Perceptions, and the Emergence of Social Norms at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

We conducted a large-scale survey covering 58 countries and over 100,000 respondents between late March and early April 2020 to study beliefs and attitudes towards citizens' and governments' responses at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most respondents reported holding normative beliefs in support of COVID-19 containment measures, as well as high rates of adherence to these measures. They also believed that their government and their country's citizens were not doing enough and underestimated the degree to which others in their country supported strong behavioral and policy responses to the pandemic. Normative beliefs were strongly associated with adherence, as well as beliefs about others' and the government's response. Lockdowns were associated with greater optimism about others' and the government's response, and improvements in measures of perceived mental well-being; these effects tended to be larger for those with stronger normative beliefs. Our findings highlight how social norms can arise quickly and effectively to support cooperation at a global scale.

How personality and policy predict pandemic behavior: Understanding sheltering-in-place in 55 countries at the onset of COVID-19.

The spread of COVID-19 within any given country or community at the onset of the pandemic depended in part on the sheltering-in-place rate of its citizens. The pandemic led us to revisit one of psychology's most fundamental and most basic questions in a high-stakes context: what determines human behavior? Adopting a Lewinian interactionist lens, we investigate the independent and joint effects of macrolevel government policies and microlevel psychological factors-that is, personality-on whether individuals sheltered-in-place. We analyzed data collected in late March and early April 2020 from 101,005 participants in 55 countries, a time period that coincided with the early and accelerating stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This time period also contained substantial variation in the stringency of governmental policy toward sheltering-in-place, both between countries and within each country over time. Analyses revealed that personality and the stringency of governmental policies independently predicted sheltering-in-place rates. Policy stringency was positively related to sheltering-in-place. For the personality dimensions, Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism all predicted higher rates of sheltering-in-place, whereas Extraversion was negatively related to staying at home. In addition, two personality traits-Openness to Experience and Neuroticism-interacted with governmental policy to predict whether individuals sheltered-in-place; openness and neuroticism each had weaker effects on sheltering-in-place as governmental policies became stricter. Theoretically, the findings demonstrate that individual differences predict behavior (i.e., sheltering-in-place) even when governments take strong action targeting that behavior. Practically, they suggest that even if governments lift their shelter-in-place restrictions, some individuals will shelter-in-place less than others. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Higher economic inequality intensifies the financial hardship of people living in poverty by fraying the community buffer.

The current research investigates whether higher economic inequality disproportionately intensifies the financial hardship of low-income individuals. We propose that higher economic inequality increases financial hardship for low-income individuals by reducing their ability to rely on their community as a buffer against financial difficulties. This may occur, in part, because a frayed community buffer reduces low-income individuals' propensity to seek informal financial support from others. We provide empirical support across eight studies (sample size N = 1,029,900) from the United States, Australia and rural Uganda, through correlational and experimental data, as well as an instrumental variable analysis. On average across our studies, a 1 s.d. increase in economic inequality is associated with an increase of financial hardship among low-income individuals of 0.10 s.d. We discuss the implications of these results for policies aimed to help people living in poverty buffer against the adverse effects higher economic inequality imposes on them.

Why grit requires perseverance and passion to positively predict performance.

Prior studies linking grit-defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals-to performance are beset by contradictory evidence. As a result, commentators have increasingly declared that grit has limited effects. We propose that this inconsistent evidence has occurred because prior research has emphasized perseverance and ignored, both theoretically and empirically, the critical role of passion, which we define as a strong feeling toward a personally important value/preference that motivates intentions and behaviors to express that value/preference. We suggest that combining the grit scale-which only captures perseverance-with a measure that assesses whether individuals attain desired levels of passion will predict performance. We first metaanalyzed 127 studies (n = 45,485) that used the grit scale and assessed performance, and found that effect sizes are larger in studies where participants were more passionate for the performance domain. Second, in a survey of employees matched to supervisor-rated job performance (n = 422), we found that the combination of perseverance, measured through the grit scale, and passion attainment, measured through a new scale, predicted higher performance. A final study measured perseverance and passion attainment in a sample of students (n = 248) and linked these to their grade-point average (GPA), finding that the combination of perseverance and passion attainment predicted higher GPAs in part through increased immersion. The present results help resolve the mixed evidence of grit's relationship with performance by highlighting the important role that passion plays in predicting performance. By adequately measuring both perseverance and passion, the present research uncovers grit's true predictive power.

The critical role of second-order normative beliefs in predicting energy conservation.

Sustaining large-scale public goods requires individuals to make environmentally friendly decisions today to benefit future generations1-6. Recent research suggests that second-order normative beliefs are more powerful predictors of behaviour than first-order personal beliefs7,8. We explored the role that second-order normative beliefs-the belief that community members think that saving energy helps the environment-play in curbing energy use. We first analysed a data set of 211 independent, randomized controlled trials conducted in 27 US states by Opower, a company that uses comparative information about energy consumption to reduce household energy usage (pooled N = 16,198,595). Building off the finding that the energy savings varied between 0.81% and 2.55% across states, we matched this energy use data with a survey that we conducted of over 2,000 individuals in those same states on their first-order personal and second-order normative beliefs. We found that second-order normative beliefs predicted energy savings but first-order personal beliefs did not. A subsequent pre-registered experiment provides causal evidence for the role of second-order normative beliefs in predicting energy conservation above first-order personal beliefs. Our results suggest that second-order normative beliefs play a critical role in promoting energy conservation and have important implications for policymakers concerned with curbing the detrimental consequences of climate change.

Community trust reduces myopic decisions of low-income individuals.

Why do the poor make shortsighted choices in decisions that involve delayed payoffs? Foregoing immediate rewards for larger, later rewards requires that decision makers (i) believe future payoffs will occur and (ii) are not forced to take the immediate reward out of financial need. Low-income individuals may be both less likely to believe future payoffs will occur and less able to forego immediate rewards due to higher financial need; they may thus appear to discount the future more heavily. We propose that trust in one's community-which, unlike generalized trust, we find does not covary with levels of income-can partially offset the effects of low income on myopic decisions. Specifically, we hypothesize that low-income individuals with higher community trust make less myopic intertemporal decisions because they believe their community will buffer, or cushion, against their financial need. In archival data and laboratory studies, we find that higher levels of community trust among low-income individuals lead to less myopic decisions. We also test our predictions with a 2-y community trust intervention in rural Bangladesh involving 121 union councils (the smallest rural administrative and local government unit) and find that residents in treated union councils show higher levels of community trust and make less myopic intertemporal choices than residents in control union councils. We discuss the implications of these results for the design of domestic and global policy interventions to help the poor make decisions that could alleviate poverty.