Articulation dynamics and evaluative conditioning: investigating the boundary conditions, mental representation, and origin of the in-out effect.

People prefer linguistic stimuli with an inward (e.g. BODIKA) over those with an outward articulation dynamic (e.g. KODIBA), a phenomenon known as the articulatory in-out effect. Despite its robustness across languages and contexts, the phenomenon is still poorly understood. To learn more about the effect's boundary conditions, mental representation, and origin, we crossed the in-out effect with evaluative conditioning research. In five experiments (N = 713, three experiments pre-registered), we systematically paired words containing inward versus outward dynamics with pictures of negative versus positive valence. Although this evaluative conditioning procedure reversed the preference for inward over outward words, this was the case only for words with the same consonant sequences as the conditioned words. For words with inward/outward dynamics but different consonant sequences than the conditioned ones, a regular in-out effect emerged. Also, no preference reversal at all emerged for the conditioned consonant sequences when the contingency between single consonants at specific positions and positive/negative valence was zero. Implications of these findings for the in-out effect and evaluative conditioning are discussed.

Personal prayer counteracts self-control depletion.

Praying over longer time spans can foster self-control. Less is known about the immediate, short-term consequences of praying. Here we investigated the possibility that praying may counteract self-control depletion. Participants suppressed or did not suppress thoughts about a white bear before engaging in a brief period of either personal prayer or free thought. Then, all participants completed a Stroop task. As expected, thought suppression led to poorer Stroop performance in the free thought, but not in the prayer condition. This effect emerged on a dependent variable devoid of any religious or moral associations (Stroop task). Possible mediating mechanisms and directions for future research are discussed.

Effects of verbatim repetition of the headline message on the proceed button on click-through rates in online retail.

For online retailers, increasing click-through rates and reducing dropout rates are critical to success. In this study, we examine the effect of verbatim repetition of the website's headline message on the proceed button, based on research on processing fluency. In our field study involving 956 online platform visitors, we found that verbatim repetitions of the header message on the proceed button resulted in an increase in the conversion rate by more than 10 percentage points compared to gist repetitions and new messages. Our findings highlight the importance of simple verbatim features and demonstrate the successful application of processing fluency research to impact consumer behavior.

Looking Competent Does Not Appeal to All Voters Equally: The Role of Social Class and Politicians' Facial Appearance for Voting Likelihood.

Voters generally value competence in politicians. Four studies, all conducted in Germany, show that this is especially pronounced in people of higher compared with lower social class. The first study, with a representative sample (N1 = 2239), found that the reported importance of competence in politicians increased with increasing socioeconomic status (SES). This was mediated by self-perceived competence which was higher in participants of higher SES. In three further studies (two preregistered, N2a&2b = 396, N3 = 400) participants merely saw pictures of politicians' faces. Perceived competence based on facial appearance increased the likelihood of voting for a politician. Again, this effect was stronger among participants of higher compared with lower SES. This moderation persisted after controlling for participants' political orientation and politicians' perceived warmth and dominance. We discuss implications for future research on the psychological underpinnings of social class as well as appearance effects in the political context.

When she is Standing Left, she Might be Blamed. Responsibility Attribution for Sexualized Violence Moderated by Rape Myth Acceptance and Benevolent Sexism.

The present research contributes to the literature on victim blaming in cases of sexualized violence. Our findings show that even subtle cues, such as positioning in a picture, can influence blame attribution, particularly for people who are motivated to do so. In our experimental study we could show that with increasing rape myth acceptance as well as with increasing benevolent sexism, participants assigned more responsibility for later occurring sexualized violence to a woman displayed on the left-hand side compared to a woman displayed on the right-hand side of a picture.

The color red reduces snack food and soft drink intake.

Based on evidence that the color red elicits avoidance motivation across contexts (Mehta & Zhu, 2009), two studies investigated the effect of the color red on snack food and soft drink consumption. In line with our hypothesis, participants drank less from a red labeled cup than from a blue labeled cup (Study 1), and ate less snack food from a red plate than from a blue or white plate (Study 2). The results suggest that red functions as a subtle stop signal that works outside of focused awareness and thereby reduces incidental food and drink intake.

Transparent by choice: Proactive disclosures increase compliance with digital defaults.

Default nudges successfully guide choices across multiple domains. Online use cases for defaults range from promoting sustainable purchases to inducing acceptance of behavior tracking scripts, or "cookies." However, many scholars view defaults as unethical due to the covert ways in which they influence behavior. Hence, opt-outs and other digital decision aids are progressively being regulated in an attempt to make them more transparent. The current practice of transparency boils down to saturating the decision environment with convoluted legal information. This approach might be informed by researchers, who hypothesized that nudges could become less effective once they are clearly laid out: People can retaliate against influence attempts if they are aware of them. A recent line of research has shown that such concerns are unfounded when the default-setters proactively discloses the purpose of the intervention. Yet, it remained unclear whether the effect persists when defaults reflect the current practice of such mandated transparency boils down to the inclusion of information disclosures, containing convoluted legal information. In two empirical studies (N = 364), respondents clearly differentiated proactive from mandated transparency. Moreover, they choose the default option significantly more often when the transparency disclosure was voluntary, rather than mandated. Policy implications and future research directions are discussed.

From Which Direction Does the Empire Strike (Back)?

In cultures with left-right-script, agentic behavior is mentally represented as following a left-to-right trajectory, an effect referred to as the Spatial Agency Bias (SAB, Suitner and Maass, 2016). In this research, we investigated whether spatial representations of activities are universal across activities by analyzing the opposite concepts of "attack" and "defense". Both behaviors involve similar actions (e.g., fighting) but may differ in perceived agency. Moreover "defense" is necessarily always a response to an attack and may therefore be represented by a trajectory in the opposite direction. Two studies found the classic SAB for activities representing attacking but a reduction (Study 1) and reversal (Study 2) for activities involving defense. Although the spatial representation of defense on the right was much weaker and less unequivocal than that of attack on the left, the results suggest that the spatial representations of defense and attack are located in different positions. Apparently not all actors and all activities are spatially represented on the left with a left-to-right trajectory but position and direction depend on the perceived agency. Directions for future research and applications of our findings are discussed.

The truth about the truth: a meta-analytic review of the truth effect.

Repetition has been shown to increase subjective truth ratings of trivia statements. This truth effect can be measured in two ways: (a) as the increase in subjective truth from the first to the second encounter (within-items criterion) and (b) as the difference in truth ratings between repeated and other new statements (between-items criterion). Qualitative differences are assumed between the processes underlying both criteria. A meta-analysis of the truth effect was conducted that compared the two criteria. In all, 51 studies of the repetition-induced truth effect were included in the analysis. Results indicate that the between-items effect is larger than the within-items effect. Moderator analyses reveal that several moderators affect both effects differentially. This lends support to the notion that different psychological comparison processes may underlie the two effects. The results are discussed within the processing fluency account of the truth effect.

Truth is in the mind, but beauty is in the eye: Fluency effects are moderated by a match between fluency source and judgment dimension.

The eminent role of processing fluency in judgment and decision-making is undisputed. Not only is fluency affected by sources as diverse as stimulus repetition or visual clarity, but it also has an impact on outcomes as diverse as liking for a stimulus or the subjective validity of a statement. Although several studies indicate that sources and outcomes are widely interchangeable, recent research suggests that judgments are differentially affected by conceptual and perceptual fluency, with stronger effects of conceptual (vs. perceptual) fluency on judgments of truth. Here, we propose a fluency-specificity hypothesis according to which conceptual fluency is more informative for content-related judgments, but perceptual fluency is more informative for judgments related to perception. Two experimental studies in which perceptual and conceptual fluency were manipulated orthogonally show the superiority of content repetition on judgments of truth but the superiority of visual contrast on aesthetic evaluations. The theoretical implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Grandparental investment: The influence of reproductive timing and family size.

The influence that grandparents have on the life history traits of their descendants has been studied extensively. However, no attention has been paid to the potential influence a grandparent's own reproductive history has on the investment they make in their grandchildren. We use data from 658 Swiss grandchildren and 591 of their grandparents to investigate whether grandparents' reproductive scheduling and family size influence the amount of investment grandparents make in a focal grandchild (shared contacts, occasions to meet, activities, discussions, interests, and important roles the grandparent plays). Grandparents who were younger when they had their first child had more children and grandchildren; this relationship strengthened after controlling for grandparental age, sex, lineage, and education (all P < 0.001). Generally, having more children or grandchildren was associated with reduced levels of grandparental investment. After adjustment for a wide range of factors known to influence investment, having more children or grandchildren and having a first child or grandchild at a younger age were associated with reduced investment in 14 of 24 analyses (all P < 0.09). The association between reproductive scheduling and investment was partially mediated by the grandparent's family size. Interestingly, these relationships were only present in data reported from the grandchild's point of view, not the grandparent's. This analysis provides preliminary evidence that grandparents' reproductive strategies have consequences for the amount of investment they make in their grandchildren. These results are examined in terms of the trade-offs between current and future reproduction and offspring quality and quantity.

The Effect of Money Priming on Self-Focus in the Imitation-Inhibition Task.

The self-sufficiency hypothesis suggests that priming individuals with money makes them focus more strongly on themselves than on others. However, recently, research supporting this claim has been heavily criticized and some attempts to replicate have failed. A reason for the inconsistent findings in the field may lay in the common use of explicit measures, because they tend to rely on one or just a few items and are thus prone to demand effects and low reliability. In the present research, we administered, in two experiments, the imitation-inhibition task - a robust, unobtrusive, and reliable paradigm that is sensitive to self-other focus on a trial-by-trial basis. A pilot study found an increased focus on the self as compared to others when primed with money. Building on this finding, a preregistered high-powered experiment replicated this effect, suggesting that money primes may indeed increase a focus on the self. An additionally carried out meta-analysis indicates that automatic imitation is modulated by self-other focus and that money primes lead to a smaller focus on the self than conventional methods. Overall, the found effects are rather small and several limitations, such as order effects, call for a cautious interpretation of the findings.

Psychological distance modulates goal-based versus movement-based imitation.

In past research on imitation, some findings suggest that imitation is goal based, whereas other findings suggest that imitation can also be based on a direct mapping of a model's movements without necessarily adopting the model's goal. We argue that the 2 forms of imitation are flexibly deployed in accordance with the psychological distance from the model. We specifically hypothesize that individuals are relatively more likely to imitate the model's goals when s/he is distant but relatively more likely to imitate the model's specific movements when s/he is proximal. This hypothesis was tested in 4 experiments using different imitation paradigms and different distance manipulations. Experiment 1 served as a pilot study and demonstrated that temporal distance (vs. proximity) increased imitation of a goal relative to the imitation of a movement. Experiments 2 and 3 measured goal-based and movement-based imitation independently of each other and found that spatial distance (vs. proximity) decreased the rate of goal errors (indicating more goal imitation) compared with movement errors. Experiment 4 demonstrated that psychological distance operates most likely at the input-that is, perceptual-level. The findings are discussed in relation to construal level theory and extant theories of imitation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

When impulses take over: moderated predictive validity of explicit and implicit attitude measures in predicting food choice and consumption behaviour.

Recent theories in social psychology suggest that explicitly measured attitudes are particularly valuable for the prediction of deliberate, controlled behaviour. In contrast, implicitly measured attitudes are assumed to be more important for the prediction of less controlled, more impulsive behaviour. Yet, conclusive evidence for the differential predictive validity of both measures is scarce. We hypothesized that limitations of different control resources would lead to functionally equivalent effects. In Study 1, cognitive capacity moderated the predictive validity of both explicit and implicit attitude measures in a choice task. Self-regulatory resources led to similar patterns for eating (Study 2) and drinking behaviour (Study 3). In addition to the predictive validity of implicit and explicit attitude measures, in Study 3 we more closely investigated the relative contributions of explicitly measured attitudes and general restraint standards as two distinct, but complementing constructs that are dependent on control resources.

Predicting voting behavior with implicit attitude measures: the 2002 German parliamentary election.

Implicit measures of attitudes are commonly seen to be primarily capable of predicting spontaneous behavior. However, evidence exists that these measures can also improve the prediction of more deliberate behavior. In a prospective study we tested the hypothesis that Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures of the five major political parties in Germany would improve the prediction of voting behavior over and above explicit self-report measures in the 2002 parliamentary elections. Additionally we tested whether general interest in politics moderates the relationship between explicit and implicit attitude measures. The results support our hypotheses. Implications for predictive models of explicitly and implicitly measured attitudes are discussed.

Caring or daring? Exploring the impact of facial masculinity/femininity and gender category information on first impressions.

In two studies we disentangled and systematically investigated the impact of subtle facial cues to masculinity/femininity and gender category information on first impressions. Participants judged the same unambiguously male and female target persons-either with masculine or feminine facial features slightly enhanced-regarding stereotypically masculine (i.e., competence) and feminine (i.e., warmth) personality traits. Results of both studies showed a strong effect of facial masculinity/femininity: Masculine-looking persons were seen as colder and more competent than feminine-looking persons. This effect of facial masculinity/femininity was not only found for typical (i.e., masculine-looking men and feminine-looking women) and atypical (i.e., masculine-looking women and feminine-looking men) category members; it was even found to be more pronounced for atypical than for typical category members. This finding reveals that comparing atypical members to the group prototype results in pronounced effects of facial masculinity/femininity. These contrast effects for atypical members predominate assimilation effects for typical members. Intriguingly, very subtle facial cues to masculinity/femininity strongly guide first impressions and may have more impact than the gender category.

The power of movement: evidence for context-independent movement imitation.

Recent studies have shown that individuals often imitate the behavior of others. In these studies, the observed and imitated behaviors were always identical. The present research goes one step further and disentangles the imitation of movements from their behavioral contexts. On the basis of theories that the perception of behavior refers to the same mental representations as the execution, we found that imitation is not confined to the same class of behaviors but rather to the same class of movements that may be involved in different behaviors. Four studies demonstrated that watching an athlete lifting a barbell leads to an increase in participants' drink intake when drinking involved a similar movement (lifting a cup) but not when drinking did not involve a lifting movement (drinking through a tube). The effects were stronger for individuals high in perspective taking (Study 1) and for situations in which the perspective was manipulated to be similar to the observed actor's (Study 2). These findings demonstrate the power of movements in imitation processes, suggesting that shared goal representation is not necessary for imitating others' movements.

Good weather for Schwarz and Clore.

This article is a tribute to the "mood as information" paradigm in general and the seminal weather study (Schwarz & Clore, 1983) in particular. Schwarz and Clore used a natural variation in weather to induce different mood states and to further show that participants reported higher life satisfaction on sunny days than on rainy days, presumably because they misattributed their mood to their life satisfaction. Based on the mood-as-information heuristic the present study tested the reverse relationship between mood and weather. The results fully support the predictions of Schwarz and Clore. Participants in a good mood judged the weather more positively than did participants in a sad mood. Moreover, the effect diminished when participants were made aware of their mood, as predicted by Schwarz and Clore.

Truth from language and truth from fit: the impact of linguistic concreteness and level of construal on subjective truth.

In four experiments, the impact of concreteness of language on judgments of truth was examined. In Experiments 1 and 2, it was found that statements of the very same content were judged as more probably true when they were written in concrete language than when they were written in abstract language. Findings of Experiment 2 also showed that this linguistic concreteness effect on judgments of truth could most likely be attributed to greater perceived vividness of concrete compared to abstract statements. Two further experiments demonstrated an additional fit effect: The truth advantage of concrete statements occurred especially when participants were primed with a concrete (vs. abstract) mind-set (Experiment 3) or when the statements were presented in a spatially proximal (vs. distant) location (Experiment 4). Implications for communication strategies are discussed.