Social Psychological and Personality Science

Three years after the outbreak of COVID-19, governments are still working toward a return to “normal life.” Yet, the twin forces of ongoing disease threat and progressively relaxing restrictions raise important questions about whether, where, and when people feel safe. We analyzed data from post-event surveys of participants at live events held across Denmark between June and November 2021 (n_individuals = 4,932; n_events = 79). Consistent with the social identity model of risk-taking, identification with the audience, trust in others, and felt safety were interrelated. Multi-level modeling revealed that audiences responded to the heightened risk posed by crowds after COVID-related attendance restrictions were lifted, but also that individual differences in identification blunted the connection between crowd density at events and individual feelings of trust and safety. These findings point to a potential identity-based slippage between felt safety and actual safety in the context of collective participation and disease threat.

Social interaction and loneliness have received much research interest. However, the direction of their relationship is unclear—does social interaction shape loneliness, or does loneliness shape willingness to interact? We explored dynamics of these social experiences under exceptional circumstances: COVID-19 lockdowns, which were necessary for public health but impacted people’s social lives. We investigated the relationship between social interaction and loneliness in and out of lockdown in Australia. We used experience sampling methodology to follow 233 people across 1 week (M_age=30; 8,495 surveys) in a period that spanned one of the longest lockdowns in the world. Although loneliness did not predict subsequent social interaction, having a social interaction predicted lower subsequent loneliness, particularly in (vs. out of) lockdown. These findings suggest social interactions may limit loneliness, especially during physical isolation. In short, times when we are apart from others may be times we benefit from interacting with them the most.

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified existing inequalities by disproportionately affecting marginalized groups, which should differentially affect perceptions of, and responses to, inequality. Accordingly, the present study examines the effects of the pandemic on feelings of individual- and group-based relative deprivation (IRD and GRD, respectively), as well as whether these effects differ by ethnicity. By comparing matched samples of participants assessed before and during the first 6 months of the pandemic (N_total = 21,131), our results demonstrate the unique impacts of the pandemic on IRD and GRD among ethnic minorities and majorities. Moreover, our results reveal the status-based indirect effects of the pandemic on support for both collective action and income redistribution via IRD and GRD. As the pandemic rages on, these results foreshadow long-term, status-specific consequences for political mobilization and support for social change.

Conspiracy beliefs are associated with vaccination hesitancy, which is commonly interpreted as evidence that conspiracy theories contribute to a worldview that damages public health. An alternative, and often ignored, explanation for this relationship is that people may rationalize their existing vaccination hesitancy through conspiracy theories. In two panel studies conducted at multiple time points during the vaccination campaign of 2021, we tested the temporal relationships between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and vaccination intentions. Study 1 (three waves in a Dutch sample) provided evidence for temporal effects of conspiracy beliefs on vaccination hesitancy and of vaccination hesitancy on conspiracy beliefs. Study 2 (two waves in a U.S. sample), however, only supported an effect of vaccination hesitancy on conspiracy beliefs over time. Although these findings provide some support for the idea that conspiracy beliefs shape increased vaccination hesitancy, they more consistently support the alternative idea that vaccination hesitancy shapes increased conspiracy beliefs.

Bribery is ubiquitous in human society. Yet it remains unknown how bribe-taking behaviors of power-holders and underlying psychological processes are affected by guilt-proneness, a crucial moral-related personality trait, and how this trait–behavior association depends on harm salience brought by bribery. To address these questions, we conducted two online experiments (N_total = 2, 082) combining economic games with personality measures. Experiment 1 showed that highly guilt-prone individuals were less willing to take bribes, especially when higher harm salience was involved. Leveraging a parametric design with computational modeling, Experiment 2 confirmed the moderation effect of harm salience, and revealed a mediation role of the concern for others’ suffering, a key psychological construct in the trait–behavior association. Together, these findings demonstrate a critical function of guilt-proneness in curbing bribe-taking behaviors and suggest the concern for others’ suffering as an underlying psychological mechanism.

Individuals’ endorsement of standards of civic honesty is necessary for democracies to flourish. A critical driver of civic honesty is the relationship of trust between individuals and institutions. Research has yet to systematically assess the contextual factors that may moderate this relationship. In this study, we examined the societal influence of organized criminal groups. Criminal groups operate as alternative systems of authority that erode the reliability of institutions’ moral standards. We employed a new indicator that quantifies their societal influence to test the hypothesis that the association between individuals’ political trust and civic honesty would weaken in countries more strongly affected by criminal groups. Multilevel evidence across 83 representative national samples (N = 128,839) supported this hypothesis. Moreover, the association between political trust and civic honesty was negative in contexts where criminal groups’ influence was more extreme. We discuss the implications of the findings and future research directions.

The modern world affords unprecedented opportunities for individuals to express moral sentiments. The widespread distribution of one specific type of sentiment — outrage — has consequences for social and political harmony. The current investigation contributes to better understanding these consequences by examining what types of aggression people expect from the outraged. Furthermore, it delineates how these expectations are shaped by the emotion used to express outrage. Three pre-registered studies (N’s = 800, 1630, 1100) revealed that people infer different types of aggression from individuals who expressed anger nonverbally compared with those who expressed disgust nonverbally. Perceptions that the outraged individual was angry corresponded with expectations of direct aggression rather than indirect aggression, whereas perceptions that the outraged individual was disgusted corresponded with expectations of indirect aggression rather than direct aggression. These results revealed that the distinct emotions used to communicate outrage shape observers’ expectations of how moral conflicts will unfold.

The ability to process information abstractly functions to traverse psychological distance and expand one’s mental horizons. Therefore, abstract (vs. concrete) thinking may expand (vs. contract) one’s social scope. Accordingly, it was hypothesized that concrete (vs. abstract) processing makes one less (vs. more) susceptible to the perspective of others, attenuating (vs. increasing) public—but not private—self-awareness. Four studies (total N = 708) tested this idea. In a pilot study, a positive correlation between abstraction and public (but not private) self-awareness was found. In Studies 1a, 1b, and 2, manipulated concrete (vs. abstract) thinking reduced public self-awareness but not private self-awareness. Study 1b additionally indicated that public self-awareness was reduced by concrete thinking rather than increased by abstract thinking. Study 2 also investigated the effect of abstraction on social anxiety and embarrassment. It was demonstrated that concrete (relative abstract) thinking indirectly reduced social anxiety and embarrassment via public self-awareness. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Cognitive jurisprudence research that has used indirect measures has mostly focused on how people’s implicit biases (e.g., race) predict people’s verdicts for an individual belonging to an out-group. We aim to expand on this work by investigating implicit evaluations’ predictive strength for verdicts using an impression formation approach. In three preregistered studies, we presented mock jurors with a fictional murder trial in which the evidence against a defendant was mixed: some witnesses provided testimony suggesting guilt, whereas others sowed doubt. In all studies, implicit evaluations of the defendant, operationalized by the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) scores, uniquely predicted verdicts above and beyond explicit evaluations (Studies 1–3), the reason for evidence exclusion (Study 2), and demographics of the defendant (Study 3). These findings advance our understanding of implicit social cognition by demonstrating that implicit evaluations, operationalized by the AMP scores, can have predictive power in complex, ecologically rich contexts.