Does a pandemic context attenuate people's negative perception and meta-perception of solitude?

Solitude-the state of being alone without social interactions-is a common experience in everyday life. Despite that spending time alone can be enjoyable and functional, solitude is often stigmatised: People who engage in solitary activities are perceived negatively (negative perceptions of solitude) and anticipate a negative judgement from others (negative meta-perceptions of solitude). Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop, we examined whether a pandemic context, in which solitary behaviours were easily attributable to external reasons, would reduce people's negative perceptions and meta-perceptions of solitude. Across three preregistered experiments (total N = 767) conducted during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that the presence (vs. absence) of a pandemic context attenuated both the negative meta-perceptions and the negative perceptions of solitude. Yet, people believed that the pandemic context produced a stronger shift away from the stigmatisation of solitude than it actually did. These findings revealed the limits of contextual cues in mitigating the negative perceptions of being alone-even when these cues were explicit and readily available. The current research sheds light on the potential challenges of destigmatising solitude.

The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?

Having conversations with new people is an important and rewarding part of social life. Yet conversations can also be intimidating and anxiety provoking, and this makes people wonder and worry about what their conversation partners really think of them. Are people accurate in their estimates? We found that following interactions, people systematically underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company, an illusion we call the liking gap. We observed the liking gap as strangers got acquainted in the laboratory, as first-year college students got to know their dorm mates, and as formerly unacquainted members of the general public got to know each other during a personal development workshop. The liking gap persisted in conversations of varying lengths and even lasted for several months, as college dorm mates developed new relationships. Our studies suggest that after people have conversations, they are liked more than they know.

Self-Other Agreement and Metaperception Accuracy Across the Big Five: Examining the Roles of Depression and Self-Esteem.

OBJECTIVE: The ability to judge other people's personality characteristics and to know how we are viewed by others are important aspects of social cognition. The present study tested the impact of depressive symptoms and low self-esteem on self-other agreement and the accuracy of metaperception (i.e., how we believe others view us) across the Big Five dimensions of personality. METHOD: Participants who varied in depressive symptoms engaged in a 10-minute "getting to know you" interaction in dyads. Ratings on the Big Five personality dimensions, depression, and self-esteem were completed prior to the interaction. After the interaction, participants rated the personality of their partner and rated how they believed their partner would rate them (metaperception). RESULTS: Self-other agreement was only found on Extraversion, whereas there was significant meta-accuracy on Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion. Depressive symptoms and low self-esteem negatively biased metaperceptions of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism. CONCLUSIONS: Depression and low self-esteem function to negatively bias how we believe we are seen by others in new acquaintanceships and therefore may play an important role in the development of interpersonal relationships.

Explanations of and interventions against affective polarization cannot afford to ignore the power of ingroup norm perception.

Affective polarization, or animosity toward opposing political groups, is a fundamentally intergroup phenomenon. Yet, prevailing explanations of it and interventions against it have overlooked the power of ingroup norm perception. To illustrate this power, we begin with evidence from 3 studies which reveal that partisans' perception of their ingroup's norm of negative attitudes toward the outgroup is exaggerated and uniquely predicts their own polarization-related attitudes. Specifically, our original data show that in predicting affective polarization (i.e. how one feels about one's partisan outgroup), the variance explained by ingroup norm perception is 8.4 times the variance explained by outgroup meta-perception. Our reanalysis of existing data shows that in predicting support for partisan violence (i.e. how strongly one endorses and is willing to engage in partisan violence), ingroup norm perception explains 52% of the variance, whereas outgroup meta-perception explains 0%. Our pilot experiment shows that correcting ingroup norm perception can reduce affective polarization. We elucidate the theoretical underpinnings of the unique psychological power of ingroup norm perception and related ingroup processes. Building on these empirical and theoretical analyses, we propose approaches to designing and evaluating interventions that leverage ingroup norm perception to curb affective polarization. We specify critical boundary conditions that deserve prioritized attention in future intervention research. In sum, scientists and practitioners cannot afford to ignore the power of ingroup norm perception in explaining and curbing affective polarization.

Speak Up! Mistaken Beliefs About How Much to Talk in Conversations.

We hypothesized that people would exhibit a reticence bias, the incorrect belief that they will be more likable if they speak less than half the time in a conversation with a stranger, as well as halo ignorance, the belief that their speaking time should depend on their goal (e.g., to be liked vs. to be found interesting), when in fact, perceivers form global impressions of each other. In Studies 1 and 2, participants forecasted they should speak less than half the time when trying to be liked, but significantly more when trying to be interesting. In Study 3, we tested the accuracy of these forecasts by randomly assigning participants to speak for 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, or 70% of the time in a dyadic conversation. Contrary to people's forecasts, they were more likable the more they spoke, and their partners formed global rather than differentiated impressions.

Is Personality Pathology Ego-Syntonic? Self- and Meta-Perception of Maladaptive Personality Traits.

Research has challenged the assumption that personality pathology is "ego-syntonic" or perceived favorably and consistent with one's self-image. The present study employed a community sample (n = 401) to examine relations between self-rated maladaptive personality and liking of maladaptive traits in self and others as well as meta-perception of personality pathology (i.e., how likable participants believe others find maladaptive traits). In general, individuals with higher self-rated maladaptive traits provided higher ratings of the likability of these traits in themselves and others. However, as hypothesized, comparison of liking ratings for high scorers and the rest of the sample revealed that individuals who score high on most pathological personality traits do not "like" these traits (or rate others as "liking" them) but simply dislike them less. Results support a dimensional view of ego-syntonicity.

Meta-perception and misinformation.

Research on political misperceptions is flourishing across disciplines. Literature on misinformation susceptibility and political group meta-perceptions have arisen independently, both seeking to understand how inaccurate social beliefs of the first and second order respectively contribute to political polarization. Here we review these literatures and argue for greater integration. We highlight four domains where these two literatures intersect: how inaccurate group meta-perceptions may increase misinformation susceptibility, how misinformation may itself convey inaccurate second-order information, how second-order perceptions of misinformation belief may increase misinformation susceptibility, and how reputational concerns may affect misinformation engagement. Our hope is to illuminate fruitful avenues of future research and inspire scholars of political misperceptions to pursue unified theoretical models of how misperceptions drive negative political outcomes.

Political (Meta-)Dehumanization in Mental Representations: Divergent Emphases in the Minds of Liberals Versus Conservatives.

We conducted two reverse-correlation studies, as well as two pilot studies reported in the online supplement (total N = 1,411), on the topics of (a) whether liberals and conservatives differ in the types of dehumanization that they cognitively emphasize when mentally representing one another, and if so, (b) whether liberals and conservatives are sensitive to how they are represented in the minds of political outgroup members. Results suggest that partisans indeed differ in the types of dehumanization that they cognitively emphasize when mentally representing one another: whereas conservatives' dehumanization of liberals emphasizes immaturity (vs. savagery), liberals' dehumanization of conservatives more strongly emphasizes savagery (vs. immaturity). In addition, results suggest that partisans may be sensitive to how they are represented. That is, partisans' meta-representations-their representations of how the outgroup represents the ingroup-appear to accurately index the relative emphases of these two dimensions in the minds of political outgroup members.

Systematic review and meta-analysis of metacognitive abilities in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

Metacognitive deficits are well documented in schizophrenia spectrum disorders as a decreased capacity to adjust confidence to performance in a cognitive task. Because metacognitive ability directly depends on task performance, metacognitive deficits might be driven by lower task performance among patients. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a Bayesian meta-analysis of 42 studies comparing metacognitive abilities in 1425 individuals with schizophrenia compared to 1256 matched controls. We found a global metacognitive deficit in schizophrenia (g = -0.57, 95 % CrI [-0.72, -0.43]), which was driven by studies which did not control task performance (g = -0.63, 95 % CrI [-0.78, -0.49]), and inconclusive among controlled-studies (g = -0.23, 95 % CrI [-0.60, 0.16], BF01 = 2.2). No correlation was found between metacognitive deficit and clinical features. We provide evidence that the metacognitive deficit in schizophrenia is inflated due to non-equated task performance. Thus, efforts should be made to develop experimental protocols accounting for lower task performance in schizophrenia.

Understanding and combating misperceived polarization.

By many accounts politics is becoming more polarized, yielding dire consequences for democracy and trust in government. Yet a growing body of research on so-called false polarization finds that perceptions of 'what the other side believes' are inaccurate-specifically, overly pessimistic-and that these inaccuracies exacerbate intergroup conflict. Through a review of existing work and a reanalysis of published data, we (i) develop a typology of the disparate phenomena that are labelled 'polarization', (ii) use that typology to distinguish actual from (mis)perceived polarization, and (iii) identify when misperceived polarization gives rise to actual polarization (e.g. extreme issue attitudes and prejudice). We further suggest that a specific psychological domain is ideal for developing corrective interventions: meta-perception, one's judgement of how they are perceived by others. We review evidence indicating that correcting meta-perception inaccuracies is effective at reducing intergroup conflict and discuss methods for precisely measuring meta-perception accuracy. We argue that the reputational nature of meta-perception provides a motivational mechanism by which individuals are sensitive to the truth, even when those truths pertain to the 'other side'. We conclude by discussing how these insights can be integrated into existing research seeking to understand polarization and its negative consequences. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.

Brief Report: Adults with Autism are Less Accurate at Predicting How Their Personality Traits are Evaluated by Unfamiliar Observers.

Social cognitive impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are well-documented, yet little research has examined whether ASD is also characterized by difficulties in meta-perception, or the ability to gauge how one is perceived. In this study, ASD and TD adults (N = 22) largely did not differ on the self-perception of their personality traits or on how they expected to be perceived by unfamiliar observers. However adults with ASD were rated less favorably by TD observers (N = 412) on 19 out of 20 personality items, and adults with ASD were less accurate at predicting how they would be perceived. These findings suggest impaired meta-perception in ASD that may serve as a potential mechanism through which reduced social cognitive ability contributes to social impairment.

Psychologically Adjusted Persons Are Less Aware of How They Are Perceived by Others.

Focusing on individual differences, we studied three influences on the accuracy of meta-perceptions of personality: (a) projection, that is, relying on one's self-perception; (b) normative meta-insight, that is, relying on the perception of the typical person by others; and (c) distinctive meta-insight, that is, relying on others' perception of one's unique personality attributes. Using a round-robin design, 52 groups of four acquainted students described themselves, three acquaintances, and their meta-perceptions on the Big-Five factors of personality, and provided self-reports of psychological adjustment. Projection, normative, and distinctive meta-insight contributed uniquely to meta-perception, yet qualified by systematic individual differences: Psychologically adjusted meta-perceivers projected more and relied on distinctive meta-insight less. Moreover, acquaintance raised projection. Thus, psychologically adjusted meta-perceivers were less aware of discrepancies between their self-perceptions and their actual perceptions by others, and the better people knew another person, the more strongly they expected that this other person perceived them like they perceived themselves.