Right Times
Trends of Violence in Movies During the Past Half Century
Babak Fotouhi et al.
JAMA Pediatrics, forthcoming
"We extracted data for more than 160,000 English-language movies produced from 1970 to 2020...We computed the percentage of murderous verbs calculated as the number of verbs from the roots kill and murder (eg, “she killed X,” “he murdered Y”) divided by the total number of verbs, multiplied by 100...Of the 166,534 movies analyzed, 6.97% used murderous verbs in dialogue...There was a significantly increasing trend of murderous verbs used across all movies (b = 0.30; 95% CI, 0.22-0.38; r = 0.73). Individual trends fluctuated locally yet increased overall, and all were statistically significant except for female characters in crime movies."
Unlocking the bitter potential of nostalgia: Covariation between and causal effects of nostalgia on envy
David Newman et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past that is experienced across people from various cultures and across the lifespan. Though nostalgia has typically been conceptualized as a mixed emotion, prior research has primarily focused on positive effects. We hypothesized that nostalgia can additionally have certain negative effects. In particular, nostalgia shares certain features with envy, a negative emotion defined as a resentful longing for another person’s fortune, luck, possessions, or attributes. We predicted that nostalgia would be positively related to envy and that nostalgia would increase feelings of envy. In two cross-sectional studies (Studies 1 and 2; N = 2,588), nostalgia was positively related to envy between individuals and after controlling for demographics and relevant personality traits. In three daily diary studies (Studies 3–5; N = 298; 3,454 daily reports), daily states of nostalgia were positively related to daily feelings of envy and after controlling for daily negative events. Lagged analyses indicated bidirectional effects, such that nostalgia predicted greater envy on the following day and vice versa. In two experiments (Studies 6 and 7; N = 513), nostalgia increased feelings of envy. This effect was mediated by feelings of regret and envy for a past self, suggesting that nostalgia makes people feel envious of their past self which leads to general feelings of envy. These studies point to a novel bitter effect of nostalgia.
Impartial Intergenerational Beneficence: The Psychology of Feeling (Equal) Intergenerational Concern for All Future Generations
Stylianos Syropoulos et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across a series of eight high-powered studies (N = 6,866), we develop a method for assessing impartial intergenerational beneficence, defined as intergenerational concern for all possible future generations. Across our studies, roughly 20% of participants displayed impartial intergenerational beneficence. Participants with impartial intergenerational beneficence expressed greater perceptions that future threats can be resolved, support for policies seeking to protect future generations of people, and a profound sense of responsibility for the long-term survival and prosperity of humanity. Similarly, associations with various future-oriented attitudes, patterns of prosociality, and longtermism-related behaviors and intentions were noted. This research thus introduces a method to capture impartiality in expressed intergenerational concern and finds that people who display impartial intergenerational concern endorse prosocial principles, such as altruism and utilitarianism, while also being more concerned about their own future, the future of others, and how they will be remembered by others.
A future beyond ourselves: Self-oriented prospection predicts increased intergenerational responsibility
Kyle Fiore Law et al.
Personality and Individual Differences, February 2025
Abstract:
Do differences in how people think about their own futures predict responsibility for the collective future welfare of humanity? Across a reanalysis of existing data, four primary studies, six supplemental studies, and an internal meta-analysis (NTotal = 11,261 US participants), we investigate how individual differences in self-oriented prospection relate to intergenerational responsibility, elucidating theoretical and practical implications for the psychologies of future-thinking and intergenerational ethics alike. We consistently observe an association between Future Self-Continuity (FSC; variation in the amount of perceived overlap between people's present and future self-concept) and Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC; individual differences in tendencies to consider how present actions impact one's own future life outcomes) with increased feelings of responsibility for, perceived efficacy to impact, and identification with future generations. Drawing upon insights from behavioral economics, Construal Level Theory, and research on moral expansiveness, our results begin to reconcile the literatures studying the adaptive functions of self-oriented prospection with disparate lines of inquiry into the individual differences that mitigate tendencies to prioritize present over future generations. Moreover, the present findings open new avenues for further research to explore potential practical benefits of self-oriented prospection for bolstering efforts to improve long-term collective welfare.
To Honor and Defend: State- and Individual-Level Analyses of the Relationship Between the U.S. Culture of Honor and Military Service
Jarrod Bock et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Understanding the factors that explain why some people are more likely to enlist in military service is an important endeavor for any nation that depends upon a voluntary military force. Three studies investigated the role of honor culture in military service. These studies assessed statewide differences in military enlistment rates (Study 1), individual differences in honor endorsement between military personnel and civilians (Study 2), and associations between honor endorsement and facets of military identification in a sample of active-duty Army personnel (Study 3). Results showed that honor was strongly and consistently associated with military service, independent of a wide range of potential confounds (e.g., economic precariousness, rurality, gender, age, and military rank). This research extends previous studies on the honor-military service link and has potentially important implications for military recruitment strategies and for our understanding of why military service might be a risk factor for subsequent mental health problems.
The Spoilers of Virtual War: Experience and Performance Mediate the Relationship Between Violent Video Games and Hostility
Patrick Ewell, James Hamilton & Rosanna Guadagno
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, forthcoming
Abstract:
A substantial portion of the literature investigating whether playing video games with violent content causes aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors has relied on experimental exposure to video game violence. To date, there is significant evidence suggesting these concepts are positively related, while other experiments demonstrate a null effect. A potential explanation for these contradicting findings is a failure to account for confounding such as video game performance and video game experience. This was examined across two experiments in which dyads played a violent video game and then completed state measures of hostility and positive and negative affects. Players with superior performance and greater gaming experience reported less hostility, less negative affect, and more positive affect. Mediation models showed that experience reduced hostility indirectly through performance. Historically, concern for hostility was greatest for frequent players, however, the current evidence suggests that these two variables should be accounted for prior to drawing conclusions. More broadly, future research might benefit by considering the phenomenology of gameplay in research on the risks and benefits of this hobby.
Disinformation for hire: A field experiment on unethical jobs in online labor markets
Alain Cohn & Jan Stoop
European Economic Review, February 2025
Abstract:
The spread of misinformation has been linked to increased social divisions and adverse health outcomes, but less is known about the production of disinformation, which is misinformation intended to mislead. In a field experiment on MTurk (N = 1,197), we found that while 70% of workers accepted a control job, 61% accepted a disinformation job requiring them to manipulate COVID-19 data. To quantify the trade-off between ethical and financial considerations in job acceptance, we introduced a lower-pay condition offering half the wage of the control job; 51% of workers accepted this job, suggesting that the ethical compromise in the disinformation task reduced the acceptance rate by about the same amount as a 25% wage reduction. A survey experiment with a nationally representative sample shows that viewing a disinformation graph from the field experiment negatively affected people's beliefs and behavioral intentions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including increased vaccine hesitancy. Using a “wisdom-of-crowds” approach, we highlight how online labor markets can introduce features, such as increased worker accountability, to reduce the likelihood of workers engaging in the production of disinformation. Our findings emphasize the importance of addressing the supply side of disinformation in online labor markets to mitigate its harmful societal effects.
Ignorance can be trustworthy: The effect of social self-awareness on trust
Kristina Wald & Shereen Chaudhry
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Much research has found self-awareness to be associated with positive qualities, but we explore cases in which self-awareness sends a negative signal to others. Specifically, we propose that when a target person appears to be high in social self-awareness -- that is, the person seems to accurately know what others think of them -- observers infer that the target’s actions are more intentional because the target is acting while seeming to know what others think of their actions. Because perceived intent is the key input to trust judgments, perceived self-awareness impacts observers’ trust toward the target but does so differently depending on whether the target behaves in ways that positively or negatively impact others. When the target behaves in positive ways, exhibiting high (relative to low) self-awareness should increase trust as the positive behaviors will be interpreted as conveying stronger positive intentions toward others. However, for negative behaviors, exhibiting self-awareness should decrease trust, as it should convey stronger negative intent toward others. Across six studies (N = 4,707) using online experiments, a recall study paradigm, and live interactions in a laboratory setting, we find support for this framework. We also show that when we constrain the extent to which people can infer a target’s intentions toward others from their behaviors -- by reducing the target’s control over their own behavior or by reducing the impact of the target’s actions on others -- the effect of self-awareness on trust attenuates. Our findings suggest that self-awareness, though often considered a desirable quality, does not universally increase others’ trust.