Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

Ecology stereotypes exist across societies and override race and family structure stereotypes.
Perceivers hold ecology stereotypes—beliefs about how the environments others live in shape their behavior. Drawing upon a life history perspective, we examine the stereotypes people hold about those who live in relatively harsh and unpredictable ecologies. First, across diverse demographic groups and societies (the United States, India, Japan, Romania, the United Kingdom), people believe that individuals who live in harsh and unpredictable environments engage in “faster” behaviors (n = 2,078; ds from .80 to 2.14)—that they are more impulsive, sexually unrestricted, opportunistic, and invest less in education and their own children (Studies 1, 2, and 3). Second, these ecology stereotypes seem to underlie certain Black/White race stereotypes held by White perceivers in the United States (Study 1) and family structure stereotypes (i.e., growing up in a single-mother home) held by perceivers in both Japan and the United States (Studies 4a and 5a). Supporting this, the application of these race and family structure stereotypes is overridden or attenuated when perceivers are presented with direct information about a specific person’s ecology (Studies 1, 4A, and 5B). Third, beliefs that there is high ecological mobility within a society reduce the magnitude of ecology stereotypes (Study 3), as one would expect if ecology stereotypes function to help perceivers better predict others’ behavior. Last, ecology stereotypes do not seem to be just general valence biases or to simply reflect social class stereotypes. In sum, ecology stereotypes may be an influential but relatively unexamined type of stereotype, with broad implications for thinking about other group stereotypes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Group information enhances recognition of both learned and unlearned face appearances.
Are people better at recognizing individuals of more relevant groups, such as ingroup compared to outgroup members or high-status compared to low-status individuals? Previous studies that associated faces with group information found a robust effect of group on face recognition but only tested it using the same images presented during the learning phase. They therefore cannot tell whether group information enhances encoding of the specific image presented during learning or encoding of the person who appears in it, which should generalize to other images of that person. In addition, the measures used in these studies do not sufficiently distinguish between sensitivity and response bias. In this article, we addressed these limitations and examined in three experiments the effect of group membership (Experiments 1 and 2) and social status (Experiment 3) on face recognition. In all experiments, we assessed recognition of both learned and unlearned views of the learned faces. Our results show improved recognition of ingroup members compared to outgroup members and of individuals of high-status groups compared to low-status groups for both learned and unlearned views. These effects emerged also when we used measures of memory accuracy that adequately control for response bias. These findings highlight the importance of group and status information in person recognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Ideas worth spreading? When, how, and for whom information load hurts online talks’ popularity.
What makes cultural products such as edutainment (i.e., online talks) successful versus not? Asked differently, which characteristics make certain addresses more (vs. less) appealing? Across 12 field and lab studies, we explore when, why, and for whom the information load carried in TED talks causes them to gain (vs. lose) popularity. First and foremost, we uncover a negative effect whereby increases in the number of topics broached in a talk (i.e., information load) hurt viewer adoption. The cause? Processing disfluency. As information load soars, content becomes more difficult to process, which in turn reduces interest. Probing process further, we show this effect fades among audience members with greater need for cognition, a personality trait marking a penchant for deep and broad information processing. Similarly, the effect fades among edutainment viewers favoring education goals (i.e., cognitive enrichment) whereas it amplifies among those favoring entertainment (i.e., hedonic pleasure). Our investigation also documents the counterintuitiveness of our findings (i.e., how individuals mispredict which talks they would actually [dis]like). From these results, we derive theoretical insights for processing fluency research and the psychology of cultural products adoption (i.e., we weigh in on when, why, and for whom fluency has favorable vs. unfavorable downstream effects). We also derive prescriptive insights for (a) players of the edutainment industry whose very business hinges on curating appealing content (e.g., TED, Talks@Google, The Moth, Big Think, Spotify) and (b) communicators of all creeds wishing to broaden their reach and appeal (e.g., professors, scientists, politicians, journalists, bloggers, podcasters, content editors, online community managers). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Anxiety about the social consequences of missed group experiences intensifies fear of missing out (FOMO).
Although fear of missing out (FOMO) has become a widely experienced phenomenon, the specific social situations and cognitions driving the FOMO experience have not yet been closely studied. Across seven experiments (N = 5,441), we find that FOMO occurs when people miss events involving valued social groups and is driven by the perception of missed bonding and concerns about how this may negatively affect their future relationships. People feel greater FOMO when they miss events involving valued others (vs. strangers or irrelevant social groups) and when events foster social bonding (vs. individual activity)—even when the events themselves may be unenjoyable. FOMO is further intensified when concerns about one’s future social-group belonging are elevated, either stemming from situational triggers (e.g., social media photos) or one’s chronic anxious attachment to their social group. Notably, these concerns are exaggerated when considering the social costs of missing an event for oneself (vs. a friend). Given the social underpinnings of FOMO, reaffirming one’s social belonging by reflecting on past social connection provides temporary relief. By revealing a novel, situational antecedent of FOMO and the underlying cognitions, this research demonstrates that current well-being is informed not only by current and past feelings of belonging but also by hypothetical projections about one’s future social belonging. Taken together, our findings highlight the importance of social bonding in experiential consumption, identify new determinants of FOMO, and lay the groundwork for simple interventions to mitigate FOMO and its maladaptive consequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Compassionate love and beneficence in the family.
Compassionate love, generally defined as giving oneself for the good of another, has been receiving increased attention, especially in the context of romantic relationships. The purpose of the present research was to examine compassionate love “where it begins,” namely, in the family. Seven studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that compassionate love would be correlated with various kinds of beneficence in familial relationships, including parent–child (Studies 1 and 2) and adult child–parent relationships (Studies 3–7). Levels of compassionate love and beneficence varied somewhat, depending on the gender of the parent and the child (e.g., adult children reported more compassionate love for their mother than their father). Across relationships, there was strong support for the main prediction that compassionate love would be associated with beneficence, such as willingness to sacrifice, responsive caregiving, and the provision of support. However, it was not the case that compassionate love was negatively associated with variables that were expected to be antithetical to beneficence (e.g., caregiving motivated by obligation). It was concluded that it is important to promote compassionate love where it begins—in the home—given its strong associations with other-oriented, prosocial motivations and behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Wishful perceiving: A value-based bias for perception of close others.
Why do people not perceive their close others accurately, although they have ample information about them? We propose that one reason for such errors may be bias based on personal values. Personal values may serve as schemas defining what people see as positive, and thus affect perceptions of others’ behavior, values, and traits. We propose that, in close relationships, people see others as sharing their own values. Six studies (N = 2,225; four preregistered analyses and one preregistered study) tested this bias. Perceivers reported their personal values and the perceived values, behaviors, or traits of a close other (target), while the target also reported on the same values, behaviors, or traits. Personal values significantly and positively related to perception of close others’ values and behaviors, while controlling for the real targets’ value/behavior. Results were replicated for spouses, romantic partners, children, parents, and friends. Some evidence also supports the idea that the bias is stronger for relationships of better quality. Implications for relationship quality are discussed, as well as implications for the adaptive properties of this bias. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Are women really (not) more talkative than men? A registered report of binary gender similarities/differences in daily word use.
Women are widely assumed to be more talkative than men. Challenging this assumption, Mehl et al. (2007) provided empirical evidence that men and women do not differ significantly in their daily word use, speaking about 16,000 words per day (WPD) each. However, concerns were raised that their sample was too small to yield generalizable estimates and too age and context homogeneous to permit inferences beyond college students. This registered report replicated and extended the previous study of binary gender differences in daily word use to address these concerns. Across 2,197 participants (more than five-fold the original sample size), pooled over 22 samples (631,030 ambient audio recordings), men spoke on average 11,950 WPD and women 13,349 WPD, with very large individual differences (< 100 to >120,000 WPD). The estimated gender difference (1,073 WPD; d = 0.13; 95% CrI [316, 1,824]) was about twice as large as in the original study. Smaller differences emerged among adolescent (513 WPD), emerging adult (841 WPD), and older adult (−788 WPD) participants, but a substantially larger difference emerged for participants in early and middle adulthood (3,275 WPD; d = 0.32). Despite the considerable sample size(s), all estimates carried large statistical uncertainty and, except for the gender difference in early and middle adulthood, provide inconclusive evidence regarding whether the two genders ultimately speak a practically equivalent number of WPD, based on the preregistered ± 1,000 WPD regions of practical equivalence criterion. Experienced stress had no meaningful effect on the gender difference, and no clear pattern emerged as to whether the gender difference is accentuated for subjectively rated compared with objectively observed talkativeness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Associations of personality trait level and change with mortality risk in 11 longitudinal studies.
People who are higher in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness and lower in neuroticism tend to live longer. The present research tested the hypothesis that personality trait change in middle and older adulthood would also be associated with mortality risk, above and beyond personality trait level. Personality trait change may causally influence mortality risk through corresponding changes in health behaviors, social processes, and stress experience. Alternatively, personality trait change may be a marker of successful or unsuccessful adaptation to life circumstances, which in turn influences mortality risk, or shared risk factors may impact personality trait change and mortality risk. In the latter case, personality trait change may serve as a “psychosocial vital sign” pointing toward increased risk. In 11 samples of middle-aged and older adults (combined N = 32,348), we used multilevel growth curve models to estimate personality trait level and personality trait change across three to 11 measurement occasions spanning 6–43 years. Next, we used Cox proportional hazards models to test whether personality trait level and personality trait change were associated with mortality risk. Higher conscientiousness (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.83), extraversion (HR = 0.93), and agreeableness (HR = 0.88) were associated with longer survival while higher neuroticism was associated with shorter survival (HR = 1.22). In contrast to personality trait level, we found limited evidence for associations between personality trait change and mortality risk. We discuss conceptual and methodological implications of the present findings that may guide future research on associations between personality trait change, health, and mortality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Values and stress: Examining the relations between values and general and domain-specific stress in two longitudinal studies.
Stress experiences have been found to vary at both the interindividual and intraindividual levels. The present study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal associations between values and stress at both the between-person and the within-person levels. We considered multiple aspects of stress, including self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress, as well as general and domain-specific stress. In Study 1, data were drawn from the Midlife in the United States (N = 3,905) to test the between-person concurrent and prospective relations between values, changes in values, and general and domain-specific perceived stress. In Study 2, data from the Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (N = 13,940) were used to examine the associations between values and general and domain-specific self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress at the between- and within-person levels. The results supported meaningful associations between values and individual differences in self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress. In general, growth-oriented values consistently displayed negative relations to perceived stress, especially in the job domain. Social-focused values also showed negative associations with stress experiences. After controlling for between-person variance, temporal relations were also found between values and stress at the within-person level, with the pattern varying across types and domains of stress. Findings from the present study provide us with insights into the interindividual and intraindividual processes of values and stress. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Unlocking the bitter potential of nostalgia: Covariation between and causal effects of nostalgia on envy.
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. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Active during childhood: Undercontrolled or extraverted in late adolescence? A longitudinal study distinguishing different conceptions of childhood activity.
The role of childhood activity level in personality development is still poorly understood. Using data from a prospective study following 939 children from age 1.5 to 16.5 years, this study examined whether prospective associations of childhood activity with subsequent personality ratings in adolescence differ across two conceptualizations of childhood activity: energetic activity (defined by energy, vigor, and tempo) versus dysregulated activity (distractibility, hyperactivity, and poor self-regulation). We assessed energetic activity development (using latent growth curve modeling) at ages 1.5–8.5 years using the Activity scale from the Emotionality, Activity, and Sociability Temperament Survey, and dysregulated activity at age 8.5 using the Hyperactivity-Inattention scale from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. We then used these two kinds of activity measures (mother-reported) to predict personality self-descriptions on the Big Five Inventory 8 years later. Personality traits were first regressed on mean levels of energetic and dysregulated activity at age 8.5 years and subsequently regressed on the growth factors of energetic activity development. Results showed mean-level changes in the entire sample as energetic activity decreased by more than 1 SD across childhood (i.e., −0.18 SD per year). Energetic activity at age 8.5 positively predicted higher levels of both the Big Five extraversion domain and the self-discipline facet of conscientiousness at age 16.5. In contrast, dysregulated activity at age 8.5 predicted lower levels of both conscientiousness and agreeableness. The findings advocate for a distinction between energetic and dysregulated activity in temperament and personality theories, addressing inconsistencies in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Vol 128, Iss 2