Misplaced Divides? Discussing Political Disagreement With Strangers Can Be Unexpectedly Positive.

Differences of opinion between people are common in everyday life, but discussing those differences openly in conversation may be unnecessarily rare. We report three experiments (N = 1,264 U.S.-based adults) demonstrating that people's interest in discussing important but potentially divisive topics is guided by their expectations about how positively the conversation will unfold, leaving them more interested in having a conversation with someone who agrees versus disagrees with them. People's expectations about their conversations, however, were systematically miscalibrated such that people underestimated how positive these conversations would be-especially in cases of disagreement. Miscalibrated expectations stemmed from underestimating the degree of common ground that would emerge in conversation and from failing to appreciate the power of social forces in conversation that create social connection. Misunderstanding the outcomes of conversation could lead people to avoid discussing disagreements more often, creating a misplaced barrier to learning, social connection, free inquiry, and free expression.

Let it go: How exaggerating the reputational costs of revealing negative information encourages secrecy in relationships.

Keeping negative interpersonal secrets can diminish well-being, yet people nevertheless keep negative information secret from friends, family, and loved ones to protect their own reputations. Twelve experiments suggest these reputational concerns are systematically miscalibrated, creating a misplaced barrier to honesty in relationships. In hypothetical scenarios (Experiments 1, S1, and S2), laboratory experiments (Experiments 2 and 6), and field settings (Experiments 3 and 4), those who imagined revealing, or who actually revealed, negative information they were keeping secret expected to be judged significantly more harshly than recipients expected to judge, or actually judged, them. We theorized that revealers' pessimistic expectations stem not only from the cognitive accessibility of negative information (Experiment S3) but also from a perspective gap such that the negative outcomes of disclosing this information, compared to positive outcomes, are more accessible for prospective revealers than for recipients. Consistent with this mechanism, revealers' expectations were better calibrated when directed to focus on positive thoughts or when they considered revealing positive information (Experiments 5, 6, and S4). Revealers' miscalibrated expectations matter because they can guide decisions about whether to reveal information or conceal it as a secret (Experiment S5). As predicted, calibrating revealers' expectations increased their willingness to reveal negative information to others (Experiment 7), suggesting that miscalibrated fears of others' judgment create a misplaced barrier to honesty in relationships. Overestimating the reputational costs of disclosing negative information might leave people carrying a heavier burden of secrecy than would be optimal for their own well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Undersociality: miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection.

A person's well-being depends heavily on forming and maintaining positive relationships, but people can be reluctant to connect in ways that would create or strengthen relationships. Emerging research suggests that miscalibrated social cognition may create psychological barriers to connecting with others more often. Specifically, people may underestimate how positively others will respond to their own sociality across a variety of social actions, including engaging in conversation, expressing appreciation, and performing acts of kindness. We suggest that these miscalibrated expectations are created and maintained by at least three mechanisms: differential construal, uncertain responsiveness, and asymmetric learning. Underestimating the positive consequences of social engagement could make people less social than would be optimal for both their own and others' well-being.

Keep talking: (Mis)understanding the hedonic trajectory of conversation.

People regularly interact with new acquaintances, yet little research has examined the hedonic dynamics of these conversations or the extent to which people are aware of them. Five preregistered laboratory experiments (N = 1,093 participants, including 966 spoken conversations) address these gaps. We find that people misunderstand the hedonic trajectory of conversation: After enjoying the initial minutes of conversation with a new acquaintance, participants expected their enjoyment to decline as their conversations continued, but experienced stable or increasing enjoyment in reality. This miscalibration arose at least partly because participants underestimated how much they would have to discuss. Thus, instructing participants to mentally simulate the conversation in detail drew their attention to the conversation material they could discuss and helped to calibrate their enjoyment predictions. When left uncorrected, misunderstanding the hedonic trajectory of conversation can undermine well-being. In one study, participants preferred to spend less time in conversation and more time alone than was optimal for their enjoyment-a finding that emerged even among participants who reported wanting to enjoy themselves. Throughout our experiments we assessed various conversational contexts (including whether participants had one long conversation with a single partner or several short conversations with different partners), and features of conversation (including participants' perceived and actual interest in talking to each other, fatigue, and the intimacy of conversation), thus shining novel light on conversational dynamics more broadly. People hold incorrect assumptions about how social interaction changes over time and, consequently, may avoid longer-lasting conversations that would forge closer connections. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation.

People may want deep and meaningful relationships with others, but may also be reluctant to engage in the deep and meaningful conversations with strangers that could create those relationships. We hypothesized that people systematically underestimate how caring and interested distant strangers are in one's own intimate revelations and that these miscalibrated expectations create a psychological barrier to deeper conversations. As predicted, conversations between strangers felt less awkward, and created more connectedness and happiness, than the participants themselves expected (Experiments 1a-5). Participants were especially prone to overestimate how awkward deep conversations would be compared with shallow conversations (Experiments 2-5). Notably, they also felt more connected to deep conversation partners than shallow conversation partners after having both types of conversations (Experiments 6a-b). Systematic differences between expectations and experiences arose because participants expected others to care less about their disclosures in conversation than others actually did (Experiments 1a, 1b, 4a, 4b, 5, and 6a). As a result, participants more accurately predicted the outcomes of their conversations when speaking with close friends, family, or partners whose care and interest is more clearly known (Experiment 5). Miscalibrated expectations about others matter because they guide decisions about which topics to discuss in conversation, such that more calibrated expectations encourage deeper conversation (Experiments 7a-7b). Misunderstanding others can encourage overly shallow interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How to give away your cake and eat it too: Relinquishing control prompts reciprocal generosity.

Many resource allocations confer two rewards, but these rewards typically work in opposition to one another: Reputational rewards come to those who give and material rewards to those who receive. Eight studies reveal that abdicating a resource allocation decision-that is, giving away one's right to choose to someone else-may allow these two rewards to work in tandem. We found that people frequently abdicated to others, and abdication often prompted others to reciprocate by giving away the better of two items. This occurred in part because people perceived abdication to be generous; in fact, individuals who abdicated seemed nearly as generous as individuals who gave away the better item to begin with. Paradoxically, abdicating confers both the reputational benefits of giving and (often) the material benefits of getting. This finding has implications for everyday resource sharing behavior and as well as for theories of fairness and reciprocity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Easier Seen Than Done: Merely Watching Others Perform Can Foster an Illusion of Skill Acquisition.

Modern technologies such as YouTube afford unprecedented access to the skilled performances of other people. Six experiments ( N = 2,225) reveal that repeatedly watching others can foster an illusion of skill acquisition. The more people merely watch others perform (without actually practicing themselves), the more they nonetheless believe they could perform the skill, too (Experiment 1). However, people's actual abilities-from throwing darts and doing the moonwalk to playing an online game-do not improve after merely watching others, despite predictions to the contrary (Experiments 2-4). What do viewers see that makes them think they are learning? We found that extensive viewing allows people to track what steps to take (Experiment 5) but not how those steps feel when taking them. Accordingly, experiencing a "taste" of performing attenuates the illusion: Watching others juggle but then holding the pins oneself tempers perceived change in one's own ability (Experiment 6). These findings highlight unforeseen problems for self-assessment when watching other people.

The Humanizing Voice: Speech Reveals, and Text Conceals, a More Thoughtful Mind in the Midst of Disagreement.

A person's speech communicates his or her thoughts and feelings. We predicted that beyond conveying the contents of a person's mind, a person's speech also conveys mental capacity, such that hearing a person explain his or her beliefs makes the person seem more mentally capable-and therefore seem to possess more uniquely human mental traits-than reading the same content. We expected this effect to emerge when people are perceived as relatively mindless, such as when they disagree with the evaluator's own beliefs. Three experiments involving polarizing attitudinal issues and political opinions supported these hypotheses. A fourth experiment identified paralinguistic cues in the human voice that convey basic mental capacities. These results suggest that the medium through which people communicate may systematically influence the impressions they form of each other. The tendency to denigrate the minds of the opposition may be tempered by giving them, quite literally, a voice.

The implicit meaning of (my) change.

The concept of change simply entails the totality of ways in which a particular entity has grown better and grown worse. Five studies suggest that this is not how people actually understand it for themselves. Rather, when asked to assess how they have "changed" over time, people bring to mind only how they have improved and neglect other trajectories (e.g., decline) that they have also experienced; global change is specifically translated as directional change for the better. This tendency emerged across many populations, time frames, measures, and methodologies (Studies 1-3), and led to important downstream effects: people who reflected on "change" from their pasts experienced enhanced mood, meaning, and satisfaction in their presents, precisely because they had assumed to only think about personal improvement (Study 4). A final study shed light on mechanisms: people evaluated the word change in a speeded response task as more positive when they were instructed to interpret the word in relation to themselves versus a friend, while no differences emerged between conditions for nonchange control words (Study 5). This suggests that the basic pattern across studies stems (at least partly) from traditional self-enhancement motives-our own change spontaneously brings to mind only the ways in which we have improved, whereas change in someone else is not so immediately and uniformly associated with improvement. Taken together, these findings reveal novel insights into the content and consequences of change perception, and they more broadly highlight unforeseen biases in when and why people might subjectively (mis)interpret otherwise objective constructs. (PsycINFO Database Record

Role of NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1 in clofibrate-mediated hepatoprotection from acetaminophen.

Mice pretreated with the peroxisome proliferator clofibrate (CFB) are resistant to acetaminophen (APAP) hepatotoxicity. Whereas the mechanism of protection is not entirely known, CFB decreases protein adducts formed by the reactive metabolite of APAP, N-acetyl-p-benzoquinone imine (NAPQI). NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1) is an enzyme with antioxidant properties that is responsible for the reduction of cellular quinones. We hypothesized that CFB increases NQO1 activity, which in turn enhances the conversion of NAPQI back to the parent APAP. This could explain the decreases in APAP covalent binding and glutathione depletion produced by CFB without affecting APAP bioactivation to NAPQI. Administration of CFB (500mg/kg, i.p.) to male CD-1 mice for 5 or 10 days increased NQO1 protein and activity levels. To evaluate the capacity of NQO1 to reduce NAPQI back to APAP, we utilized a microsomal activating system. Cytochrome P450 enzymes present in microsomes bioactivate APAP to NAPQI, which binds the electrophile trapping agent, N-acetyl cysteine (NAC). We analyzed the formation of APAP-NAC metabolite in the presence of human recombinant NQO1. Results indicate that NQO1 is capable of reducing NAPQI. The capacity of NQO1 to amelioriate APAP toxicity was then evaluated in primary hepatocytes. Primary hepatocytes isolated from mice dosed with CFB are resistant to APAP toxicity. These hepatocytes were also exposed to ES936, a high affinity, and irreversible inhibitor of NQO1 in the presence of APAP. Concentrations of ES936 that resulted in over 94% inhibition of NQO1 activity did not increase the susceptibility of hepatocytes from CFB treated mice to APAP. Whereas NQO1 is mechanistically capable of reducing NAPQI, CFB-mediated hepatoprotection does not appear to be dependent upon enhanced expression of NQO1.

The impact of ACE inhibitors or angiotensin II type 1 receptor blockers on the development of new-onset type 2 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE: Angiotensin II has been shown to increase hepatic glucose production and decrease insulin sensitivity. Patients who utilize either an ACE inhibitor (ACEI) or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) may experience a decreased incidence of new-onset type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Three reviewers conducted a systematic literature search of Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library (1966 to present) to extract a consensus of trial data involving an ACEI or ARB with an end point of new-onset type 2 diabetes. Studies were included if they were randomized controlled trials verses placebo/routine therapy. A random-effects model was utilized. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Eleven trials were identified, including 66,608 patients. An ACEI or ARB prevented new-onset type 2 diabetes (odds ratio 0.78 [95% CI 0.73-0.83]). The influence of either an ACEI (six trials) or an ARB (five trials) alone on new-onset type 2 diabetes was similar (0.79 [0.71-0.89] and 0.76 [0.70-0.82], respectively). Regardless of indication for use, hypertension (seven trials), coronary artery disease (two trials), or heart failure (two trials), reductions in new-onset type 2 diabetes were maintained (0.79 [0.72-0.85], 0.76 [0.60-0.95], and 0.70 [0.50-0.96], respectively). No statistical heterogeneity was observed for any evaluation (P > 0.1 for all comparisons). ACEIs and ARBs did not reduce the odds of mortality, cardiovascular, or cerebrovascular events versus control therapy among all of these studies combined or the hypertension trials. ACEIs and ARBs did reduce the odds of these outcomes among the coronary artery disease studies versus control therapy. CONCLUSIONS: ACEIs or ARBs may decrease patients' odds of developing new-onset type 2 diabetes but does not reduce the odds of mortality, cardiovascular, or cerebrovascular outcomes over the study follow-up periods among patients with hypertension.

Hemodynamic impact of an ephedra-free multicomponent weight-loss supplement.

PURPOSE: The effect of Metabolife Ephedra-Free on blood pressure (BP) and hemodynamics was studied. METHODS: Healthy volunteers were randomly assigned to take a single dose of Metabolife Ephedra-Free or matching placebo and then crossed over to the opposite treatment after a seven-day washout period. BP was measured at baseline and one, three, and five hours after administration. Cardiac index, systemic vascular resistance index (SVRI), and total thoracic fluid content were determined in a subgroup of subjects. RESULTS: Twenty patients (mean +/- S.D. age, 24.8 +/- 1.9 years) completed the study. No significant differences in systolic or diastolic BP were found between the Metabolife Ephedra-Free and placebo groups. In the subgroup (n = 8), SVRI was higher (but not significantly so) in the Metabolife Ephedra-Free group than in the placebo group at one hour (2162.5 +/- 421.1 versus 1934.6 +/- 344.2 dyn x sec x cm(-5) x m(2)); the difference was significant at five hours (1981.6 +/- 293.3 versus 1765.1 +/- 340.3 dyn x sec x cm(-5) x m(2)). CONCLUSION: Single doses of Metabolife Ephedra-Free did not affect BP in healthy young volunteers. SVRI did not exceed the normal range but was elevated at five hours compared with SVRI in placebo recipients.

Electrocardiographic effects of an Ephedra-Free, multicomponent weight-loss supplement in healthy volunteers.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Metabolife 356, an ephedra-containing weight-loss product, substantially increases the corrected QT (QTc) interval. Metabolife Ephedra Free, a similar supplement, contains caffeine and extracts of green tea, garcinia cambogia, and yerba mate. Its electrocardiographic (ECG) effects are not known. Therefore, we sought to determine the effect of this supplement on the QTc interval. DESIGN: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. SETTING: University of Connecticut, Storrs Campus. SUBJECTS: Twenty healthy volunteers. Intervention. A single capsule containing half the normal recommended dose of Metabolife Ephedra Free or matching placebo was administered in crossover fashion, with a 7-day washout period between treatments. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Baseline and three postdose ECG measurements were obtained, and QTc intervals were measured over a 5-hour study period. No significant differences in the QTc interval or other ECG variables were observed between the Metabolife Ephedra Free and placebo groups. CONCLUSION: At half the recommended single dose, Metabolife Ephedra Free does not affect the QTc interval or other ECG variables over 5 hours. Dose-response studies and studies of longer duration should be conducted.

Impact of prophylactic amiodarone on length of hospital stay, stroke, and atrial fibrillation after cardiothoracic surgery.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of prophylactic amiodarone on length of stay (LOS), postoperative stroke, and postoperative atrial fibrillation (POAF). DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Connecticut. PATIENTS: Two thousand forty-six patients who underwent cardiothoracic surgery from February 1998-October 2003 (186 received amiodarone, 1860 were controls). MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: Patients receiving any of the prophylactic amiodarone regimens used in the Atrial Fibrillation Suppression Trials (AFIST) I and II were matched (1:10 matching) for age, valvular surgery, history of atrial fibrillation, sex, beta-blocker intolerance, and preoperative digoxin therapy with patients not receiving amiodarone prophylaxis. The AFIST regimens consisted of oral amiodarone 6 g over 6 days and 7 g over 10 days, beginning on preoperative days 1 and 5, respectively, or a hybrid intravenous and oral loading regimen delivering amiodarone 7 g over 5 days. Mean+/-SD age of the patients was 68.9+/-9.8 years, 75% were men, and 21% had undergone valvular surgery. Patients receiving prophylactic amiodarone had a shorter LOS (8.6+/-6.0 days) than controls (11.6+/-14.0 days, p=0.003) and a reduced frequency of POAF (23.1% vs 29.9%, p=0.05). Frequency of stroke was not significantly affected (2.2% vs 2.7% in the amiodarone vs control groups, p=0.61). CONCLUSION: Use of the prophylactic amiodarone regimens from the AFIST trials reduced LOS by 3.0 days and frequency of POAF by 22.7%.