Inaugural editorial.

The commencement of a new editorial tenure within the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition (JPSP: ASC) provides an opportunity for reflection regarding the journal's core mission. The editors recognize that social psychology is at a crossroads due to competing demands that may have led to reduced submissions and posed challenges for previous editors in filling the journal's pages. Now, JPSP: ASC has been allotted more pages to allow for growth during this editorial term. Although this is desirable for the field, it adds to the pressure of identifying articles for publication given the difficulties filling the pages during previous editorial terms. As the premier outlet of social psychology since 1965, JPSP: ASC will retain its centrality if we increase submissions and publish more articles, while continuing to strive to communicate methodologically trustworthy, intellectually stimulating, and socially relevant research, in a responsible fashion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Is contact among social class groups associated with legitimation of inequality? An examination across 28 countries.

Is class-based contact associated with legitimation of inequality? Drawing from the idea that people adopt beliefs predominant in groups with whom they interact, we hypothesized that upper-class contact would correspond to greater legitimation of inequality, whereas lower-class contact would correspond to lesser legitimation of inequality among lower- and upper-class individuals. We also hypothesized that middle-class individuals might possess a more precarious identity, leading lower-class contact to correspond to higher legitimation of inequality. We tested hypotheses using a nationally representative sample from Chile (N = 4446; Study 1), and nationally representative samples from 28 countries (N = 43,811; Study 2). Support for hypotheses was mixed. Upper-class contact was often associated with greater legitimation of inequality, whereas lower-class contact was frequently related to lower legitimation of inequality. Patterns emerged among most social class groups, but there was also variation across groups. We discuss potential explanations for results along with theoretical implications for class-based contact.

How Do Pandemic Policies and Communication Shape Intergroup Outcomes? Initial Findings From the COVID-19 Pandemic and Open Questions for Research and Policy.

Government policies can be productive tools for protecting citizens while simultaneously forging more egalitarian societies. At the same time, history has shown that well-intentioned governmental actions, such as those meant to quell pandemics (e.g., blood-donation restrictions), can single out members of marginalized groups (e.g., men who have sex with men). How did government actions shape intergroup outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic? Here, we draw from emerging research to provide informed conjectures regarding whether and how government actions affected stereotypes (e.g., beliefs about gender), prejudice (e.g., anti-Asian bias), and intergroup violence (e.g., hate crimes against Asian individuals) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss research examining the impact of policies intended to curb the spread of the disease, and we consider possible effects of the strategies used to communicate about the virus. Furthermore, we highlight open questions regarding how and why pandemic policies and communication shape intergroup outcomes, propose key directions for future research, and note possible implications for future development of policy and communication strategies.

Were Americans' Political Attitudes Linked to Objective Threats From COVID-19? An Examination of Data From Project Implicit During Initial Months of the Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created objectively threatening situations in everyday life (e.g., unemployment, risk of infection), and researchers have begun to ask whether threats from the pandemic are linked to people's political attitudes. However, scholars currently lack a systematic answer to this question. Here, we examined whether objective COVID-19 threats (cases, deaths, and government restrictions) occurring over the initial months of the pandemic (February-June 2020) were associated with seven different assessments of political attitudes among Project Implicit users in the United States (N = 34,581). We did not consistently observe meaningful associations between COVID-19 threats and political attitudes. The lack of consistent meaningful associations emerged regardless of the level of analysis (country, state, and county) or participant's self-identified ideology. Collectively, these findings failed to find evidence that political attitudes were tied to COVID-19 threats in a meaningful way during the initial months of the pandemic.

The confident conservative: Ideological differences in judgment and decision-making confidence.

In this research, we document the existence of broad ideological differences in judgment and decision-making confidence and examine their source. Across a series of 14 studies (total N = 4,575), we find that political conservatives exhibit greater judgment and decision-making confidence than do political liberals. These differences manifest across a wide range of judgment tasks, including both memory recall and "in the moment" judgments. Further, these effects are robust across different measures of confidence and both easy and hard tasks. We also find evidence suggesting that ideological differences in closure-directed cognition might in part explain these confidence differences. Specifically, conservatives exhibit a greater motivation to make rapid and efficient judgments and are more likely to "seize" on an initial response option when faced with a decision. Liberals, conversely, tend to consider a broader range of alternative response options before making a decision, which in turn undercuts their confidence relative to their more conservative counterparts. We discuss theoretical implications of these findings for the role of ideology in social judgment and decision-making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Political aspects of shared reality.

The political world permeates people's everyday experiences. In this article, we review recent research concerning how the pursuit, creation, and maintenance of shared reality underlie important political phenomena. We address three general points. First, we discuss how the desire to share reality shapes the political attitudes that people adopt. Second, we outline how the existence of competing representations of reality can lead to prolonged political conflicts that are challenging to overcome. Third, we consider how and why shared reality contributes to social stasis and change. A scientifically informed understanding of how shared reality shapes the political arena will enrich psychological research and facilitate addressing social issues.

Accumulative fusion and the issue of age: Reconciling the model with the data.

We discuss a disconnect between the predictions of Whitehouse's model regarding the accumulative nature of fusion and real-world data regarding the age at which people generally engage in self-sacrifice. We argue that incorporating the link between age and identity development into Whitehouse's theoretical framework is central to understanding when and why people engage in self-sacrifice on behalf of the group.

The "Bad Is Black" Effect: Why People Believe Evildoers Have Darker Skin Than Do-Gooders.

Across six studies, people used a "bad is black" heuristic in social judgment and assumed that immoral acts were committed by people with darker skin tones, regardless of the racial background of those immoral actors. In archival studies of news articles written about Black and White celebrities in popular culture magazines (Study 1a) and American politicians (Study 1b), the more critical rather than complimentary the stories, the darker the skin tone of the photographs printed with the article. In the remaining four studies, participants associated immoral acts with darker skinned people when examining surveillance footage (Studies 2 and 4), and when matching headshots to good and bad actions (Studies 3 and 5). We additionally found that both race-based (Studies 2, 3, and 5) and shade-based (Studies 4 and 5) associations between badness and darkness determine whether people demonstrate the "bad is black" effect. We discuss implications for social perception and eyewitness identification.

Ideological Differences in Anchoring and Adjustment During Social Inferences.

Recent research has demonstrated that conservatives perceive greater similarity to political ingroup members than do liberals. In two studies, we draw from a framework of "anchoring and adjustment" to understand why liberals and conservatives differ in their perceptions of ingroup similarity. Results indicate that when participants made judgments under time pressure, liberals and conservatives did not differ in assuming ingroup similarity. However, when participants were given sufficient time to make judgments, liberals assumed less similarity than conservatives did, suggesting that liberals adjusted their judgments to a greater extent than conservatives did (Studies 1 and 2). In examining an underlying motivational process, we found that when conservatives' desire to affiliate with others was attenuated, they adjusted their initial judgments of ingroup similarity to a similar extent as liberals did (Study 2). We discuss implications for research on ideology and social judgment.

Beliefs about Childhood Vaccination in the United States: Political Ideology, False Consensus, and the Illusion of Uniqueness.

UNLABELLED: Several contagious diseases were nearly eradicated through childhood vaccination, but some parents have decided in recent years not to fully vaccinate their children, raising new public health concerns. The question of whether and how beliefs about vaccination are linked to political ideology has been hotly debated. This study investigates the effects of ideology on perceptions of harms and benefits related to vaccination as well as judgments of others' attitudes. A total of 367 U.S. adults (131 men, 236 women; Mage = 34.92 years, range = 18-72) completed an online survey through Mechanical Turk. Results revealed that liberals were significantly more likely to endorse pro-vaccination statements and to regard them as "facts" (rather than "beliefs"), in comparison with moderates and conservatives. Whereas conservatives overestimated the proportion of like-minded others who agreed with them, liberals underestimated the proportion of others who agreed with them. That is, conservatives exhibited the "truly false consensus effect," whereas liberals exhibited an "illusion of uniqueness" with respect to beliefs about vaccination. Conservative and moderate parents in this sample were less likely than liberals to report having fully vaccinated their children prior to the age of two. A clear limitation of this study is that the sample is not representative of the U.S. POPULATION: Nevertheless, a recognition of ideological sources of potential variability in health-related beliefs and perceptions is a prerequisite for the design of effective forms of public communication.

When Perspective Taking Creates a Motivational Threat: The Case of Conservatism, Same-Sex Sexual Behavior, and Anti-Gay Attitudes.

Taking another person's perspective has generally been found to foster positive attitudes. We propose that perspective taking can lead to more negative attitudes when people imagine an experience that threatens their current motivations and goals. We test this idea by examining how taking the perspective of a male same-sex couple influences political conservatives' attitudes. Across four studies, we demonstrate that (a) the extent to which conservatives (but not liberals) imagine same-sex sexual behavior predicts more anti-gay attitudes, (b) this effect is in part attributable to conservatives experiencing greater disgust, and (c) having conservatives reappraise disgust as not necessarily signaling the threat of disease eliminates this effect. These findings indicate that perspective taking can foster negative attitudes when the content of perspective taking threatens current motivations. The proposed ideas provide unique insights toward developing a more comprehensive framework of how perspective taking shapes attitudes.

When the Spatial and Ideological Collide: Metaphorical Conflict Shapes Social Perception.

In the present article, we introduce the concept of metaphorical conflict-a conflict between the concrete and abstract aspects of a metaphor. We used the association between the concrete (spatial) and abstract (ideological) components of the political left-right metaphor to demonstrate that metaphorical conflict has marked implications for cognitive processing and social perception. Specifically, we showed that creating conflict between a spatial location and a metaphorically linked concept reduces perceived differences between the attitudes of partisans who are generally viewed as possessing fundamentally different worldviews (Democrats and Republicans). We further demonstrated that metaphorical conflict reduces perceived attitude differences by creating a mind-set in which categories are represented as possessing broader boundaries than when concepts are metaphorically compatible. These results suggest that metaphorical conflict shapes social perception by making members of distinct groups appear more similar than they are generally thought to be. These findings have important implications for research on conflict, embodied cognition, and social perception.

Government instability shifts skin tone representations of and intentions to vote for political candidates.

Does government stability shift the way White and Black Americans represent and make voting decisions about political candidates? Participants judged how representative lightened, darkened, and unaltered photographs were of a racially ambiguous candidate ostensibly running for political office (Studies 1-3). When the governmental system was presented as stable, White participants who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a lightened photo as more representative of the candidate, and Black participants who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a darkened photo as more representative (Studies 1-3). However, under conditions of instability, both Whites and Blacks who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a lightened photo as more representative (Study 3). Representations of (Studies 2 and 3) and actual differences in (Studies 4a and 4b) skin tone predicted intentions to vote for candidates, as a function of government stability and participants' race. Further evidence suggested that system stability shifted the motivations that guided voting decisions (Study 4a and 4b). When the system was stable, the motivation to enhance one's group predicted greater intentions to vote for lighter skinned candidates among Whites, and greater intentions to vote for darker skinned candidates among Blacks. When the system was unstable, however, lacking confidence in the sociopolitical system predicted intentions to vote for lighter skinned candidates among both Whites and Blacks. Implications for political leadership and social perception are discussed.

Conservatives negatively evaluate counterstereotypical people to maintain a sense of certainty.

People frequently use physical appearance stereotypes to categorize individuals when their group membership is not directly observable. Recent research indicates that political conservatives tend to use such stereotypes more than liberals do because they express a greater desire for certainty and order. In the present research, we found that conservatives were also more likely to negatively evaluate and distribute fewer economic resources to people who deviate from the stereotypes of their group. This occurred for people belonging to both preexisting and novel groups, regardless of whether the stereotypes were real or experimentally fabricated. Critically, conservatives only negatively evaluated counterstereotypical people when the stereotypes were functional-that is, when they expected that they would need to use the stereotypes at a later point to categorize individuals into groups. Moreover, increasing liberals' desire for certainty led them to negatively evaluate counterstereotypical people just like conservatives did. Thus, conservatives are not only more likely to use stereotypes than are liberals, but are especially likely to negatively evaluate counterstereotypical people to organize the social world with greater certainty.

Anxiety perseverance in intergroup interaction: When incidental explanations backfire.

Intergroup interactions are often anxiety provoking, and this can lead members of both majority and minority groups to avoid contact. Whereas negative consequences of experiencing intergroup anxiety are well documented, the role of perceived anxiety has received substantially less theoretical and empirical attention. We demonstrate in 3 experiments that the perception of anxiety in others can undermine intergroup interactions even when the anxiety can be attributed to a source that is unrelated to the interaction. Participants who learned that a cross-race partner's anxiety could be attributed to an upcoming evaluation (Study 1) or a stimulant (i.e., caffeine, Studies 2 and 3) expressed less interest in continuing an interaction (Studies 1 and 2), showed less self-disclosure (Study 2), and increased physical distance between themselves and their partner (Study 3) than did those given no source information and participants who interacted with a same-race partner. Moreover, compared to control participants, perceivers who were given an incidental explanation for their partner's anxiety perceived outgroup, but not ingroup, partners as more anxious (Studies 1 and 3) and showed heightened accessibility of anxiety words (Study 3), indicating that incidental source information enhanced accessibility of intergroup (but not intragroup) anxiety at early stages of information processing. Theoretical and practical implications for combating paradoxical effects of perceived anxiety in intergroup interactions are considered.

"Ditto Heads": Do Conservatives Perceive Greater Consensus Within Their Ranks Than Liberals?

In three studies, we examined (a) whether conservatives possess a stronger desire to share reality than liberals and are therefore more likely to perceive consensus with politically like-minded others even for non-political judgments and, if so, (b) whether motivated perceptions of consensus would give conservatives an edge in progressing toward collective goals. In Study 1, participants estimated ingroup consensus on non-political judgments. Conservatives perceived more ingroup consensus than liberals, regardless of the amount of actual consensus. The desire to share reality mediated the relationship between ideology and perceived ingroup consensus. Study 2 replicated these results and demonstrated that perceiving ingroup consensus predicted a sense of collective efficacy in politics. In Study 3, experimental manipulations of affiliative motives eliminated ideological differences in the desire to share reality. A sense of collective efficacy predicted intentions to vote in a major election. Implications for the attainment of shared goals are discussed.

The liberal illusion of uniqueness.

In two studies, we demonstrated that liberals underestimate their similarity to other liberals (i.e., display truly false uniqueness), whereas moderates and conservatives overestimate their similarity to other moderates and conservatives (i.e., display truly false consensus; Studies 1 and 2). We further demonstrated that a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives in the motivation to feel unique explains this ideological distinction in the accuracy of estimating similarity (Study 2). Implications of the accuracy of consensus estimates for mobilizing liberal and conservative political movements are discussed.

Effects of implementation intentions on anxiety, perceived proximity, and motor performance.

Anxiety leads to exaggerated perceptions of distance, which may impair performance on a physical task. In two studies, we tested one strategy to reduce anxiety and induce perceived proximity to increase performance. We predicted implementation intentions that reduce anxiety would increase perceived visual proximity to goal-relevant targets, which would indirectly improve performance. In two studies, we induced performance anxiety on a physical task. Participants who formed implementation intentions to reduce anxiety perceived goal-relevant targets (e.g., golf hole, dartboard) as physically closer and performed better than both participants without a strategy (Study 1) and participants with only a goal to regulate anxiety (Study 2). Furthermore, perceived proximity improved performance indirectly by increasing subjective task ease (Study 2). Results suggest that implementation intentions can reduce anxiety and lead to perceived proximity of goal-relevant targets, which helps perceivers make progress on goals.

The politics of gaydar: ideological differences in the use of gendered cues in categorizing sexual orientation.

In the present research, we investigated whether, because of differences in cognitive style, liberals and conservatives would differ in the process of categorizing individuals into a perceptually ambiguous group. In 3 studies, we examined whether conservatives were more likely than liberals to rely on gender inversion cues (e.g., feminine = gay) when categorizing male faces as gay vs. straight, and the accuracy implications of differential cue usage. In Study 1, perceivers made dichotomous sexual orientation judgments (gay-straight). We found that perceivers who reported being more liberal were less likely than perceivers who reported being more conservative to use gender inversion cues in their deliberative judgments. In addition, liberals took longer to categorize targets, suggesting that they may have been thinking more about their judgments. Consistent with a stereotype correction model of social categorization, in Study 2 we demonstrated that differences between liberals and conservatives were eliminated by a cognitive load manipulation that disrupted perceivers' abilities to engage in effortful processing. Under cognitive load, liberals failed to adjust their initial judgments and, like conservatives, consistently relied on gender inversion cues to make judgments. In Study 3, we provided more direct evidence that differences in cognitive style underlie ideological differences in judgments of sexual orientation. Specifically, liberals were less likely than conservatives to endorse stereotypes about gender inversion and sexual orientation, and this difference in stereotype endorsement was partially explained by liberals' greater need for cognition. Implications for the accuracy of ambiguous category judgments made with the use of stereotypical cues in naturalistic settings are discussed.

What's so insidious about "Peace, Love, and Understanding"? A system justification perspective.

We agree that promoting intergroup harmony "carries insidious, often unacknowledged, 'system-justifying' consequences" (sect. 4.1.3, para. 2) and identify several ways in which "benevolent" and "complementary" stereotypes, superordinate identification, intergroup contact, and prejudice reduction techniques can undermine social change motivation by reinforcing system-justifying beliefs. This may "keep the peace," but it also prevents individuals and groups from tackling serious social problems, including inequality and oppression.