Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Prominent accounts suggest that people feel self-conscious emotions when they evaluate their self-caused, identity-relevant behavior as a success or failure (Tracy & Robins, 2004)-even if they expected to succeed or fail. We propose a novel, alternative account that builds on those prior by considering expectations. People feel self-conscious emotions when they evaluate their self-caused, identit…

Conversations with strangers and weak ties tend to be positive experiences, and yet research suggests a reliable tendency to hold overly pessimistic expectations about such conversations. We examine how people update their beliefs after talking with strangers to understand how people's miscalibrated social expectations could persist even in the presence of more positive social experiences. In thr…

The idea that racial prejudice contributes to discrimination not only deliberately but also in a more automatic fashion has been one of the most prominent topics in social psychological research in the past 30 years. Much of the evidence for theories of automatic prejudice stems from the use of indirect measures of implicit attitudes, yet meta-analyses give differing estimates regarding the predi…

Drawing on just-world theory and theories of psychological distance, we tested the idea that people respond to injustice by symbolically distancing themselves from innocent victims. Across 12 studies using varied victimization contexts and spatial arrangement methods, we examined whether perceived injustice motivates people to place victims further from the self in visual space based on perceived…

Knowing how to respond to sexist comments and counteract their harmful consequences remains a challenging task for male allies. In this mixed-methods research, our preregistered qualitative study of 82 male leaders from the United States (Study 1) reveals that most intend to confront perpetrators of sexist remarks, with a preference for doing so privately rather than publicly; relatively few inte…

How do people judge those who commit faux pas? Across six preregistered studies (<i>N</i> = 3,204), we find that the answer depends on how a faux pas is presented to others and the extent to which it harms others. For faux pas that cause minimal or no harm to others, those who display amusement (by laughing at their error) are seen as warmer, more competent, and more authentic (though not signifi…

Prior research on the psychological mechanisms that sustain gender employment segregation has examined the spillover of masculine gender role norms into organizational norms in male-typed fields. We expand this theoretical lens to examine the spillover of feminine gender role norms into organizational norms in female-typed fields, introducing the Femininity Workplace Culture construct. We theoriz…

The Big Five were originally conceived as orthogonal dimensions and the top of the personality trait hierarchy, but they have been found to be regularly correlated, and two higher-order factors or metatraits have been identified above them, often labeled Stability (conscientiousness, agreeableness, and low neuroticism) and Plasticity (extraversion and openness/intellect). Skeptics have argued tha…

Trait taxonomies such as the Big Five have been effective in studying population-level trends but may obscure important individual differences in the structure, stability, and personal relevance of individuals' dispositional tendencies. Inspired by Gordon Allport's notion that people may be defined by distinctive "organizing foci" of personality, the current work introduces the <i>central trait a…

How do U.S. partisans expect members of their political ingroup to react when they diverge from the typical view of their party on a partisan issue (e.g., a Democrat adopting a more conservative stance on private gun ownership)? How accurate are these expectations, and how do they influence whether people choose to speak up or stay silent? Five main studies and five supplemental studies (<i>N</i>…

Organizations and academic institutions often pursue two goals in their selection processes: They seek to uphold a meritocracy wherein the "best" candidates are selected and to increase the diversity of their workforces and student bodies. Across four large, preregistered experiments (<i>N</i> = 5,805) in laboratory and field settings, we theorize a belief in a <i>diversity-meritocracy trade-off<…

For decades, psychologists have appreciated that the average person sees themselves as better than average, particularly in moral domains. Although self-other comparisons permit establishing normative violations, they leave unanswered whether people see themselves and others positively or negatively in an absolute sense. The present research introduces a novel measure of moral thresholds to ident…

A key assumption in collective memory research is that group members are particularly inclined to preserve history that reinforces the ingroup's positive identity. Yet, this assumption lacks solid empirical support, as research has rarely measured the identity-protective potential of historical events considered important to remember. Theoretically, this support is essential because group members…

Rather than directly confronting their partners, people often use indirect strategies (e.g., making sarcastic comments, muttering under their breath, being passively aggressive). Yet, whereas directly confronting a partner can bring about desired change, indirect opposition tends to undermine relationship quality without bringing about subsequent change. So, why do people engage in indirect oppos…

Individual differences in psychological reactivities (i.e., the degree to which individuals react differently to social interactions) are central to psychological research. Previous theory-based research has identified substantial individual differences in reactivities but few robust predictors of these differences. This work aimed to address two questions: First, can individual differences in re…

Striving for social status is a fundamental human motive, yet individuals vary considerably in their status-seeking tendencies. Drawing on attachment literature and life history theory, we propose that attachment anxiety drives status pursuit through heightened intrasexual competition. Across six preregistered studies (<i>N</i> = 4,456) spanning five countries, we find that attachment anxiety, ra…

Procrastination-a voluntary delay of an intended action despite the expectation of negative consequences-is a widespread phenomenon. Previous research has mainly focused on procrastination in specific situations and has rarely examined stability and change in procrastination over long periods of time. In the present study, we conducted an 18-year longitudinal study of procrastination. We report o…

This research posits that when people, who make a proactive choice for a justified reason, encounter an interim negative outcome (e.g., a temporary loss from a stock investment that could yield a profit in the future), they engage in the self-justification mechanism to view their decision more favorably, initiate self-serving bias to minimize self-blame for the outcome, and trigger confirmatory b…

Young adults increasingly abstain from committed romantic relationships. However, psychological theories of singlehood are lacking, and it remains unclear who selects into remaining single throughout emerging adulthood and how consistent singles' well-being is affected over time. Here, we included 17,390 initially never partnered respondents from three panel studies from the United Kingdom and Ge…

Higher education is widely believed to have a liberalizing effect on students, yet empirical findings are mixed. In two studies (total <i>N</i> = 483,885), we investigated the "diploma divide" in the United States. In the past half-century, we found that adults with more education have consistently held more left-leaning views on social but not economic issues. Before the 2010s, however, there we…