Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

A balanced mind: Awe fosters equanimity via temporal distancing.
Awe has been shown to promote well-being through various mechanisms (see Monroy & Keltner, 2023). In this research, we propose a novel perspective for the well-being benefits of awe: Awe fosters equanimity—a balanced state of mind toward all experiences of any valence—and we document how this works, namely, through temporal distancing. Across seven studies, using a combination of experiments, big data analytics, and intervention methods, we provide support for our hypotheses. In Studies 1–3, induced awe increased equanimity, indexed by a self-report scale (Study 1), a decrease in emotional reactivity (Study 2), and an unbiased behavioral approach to positive and negative experiences (Study 3). In Studies 4–6, awe increased equanimity via temporal distancing. This effect persisted beyond self-diminishment (i.e., feeling small and insignificant) and proved to be cross-culturally robust (Study 4). An analysis of almost 200,000 posts on social media (Study 5) revealed that the proposed mediation model manifested in ecologically rich contexts. Study 6 provided causal evidence for the mediation model. Finally, in a 5-day awe intervention (Study 7), awe increased psychological and physical well-being, with equanimity accounting for these benefits. Taken together, these findings reveal that awe cultivates a balanced state of mind by shifting one’s temporal perspective on life events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
A taxonomy for human social perception: Data-driven modeling with cinematic stimuli.
Every day, humans encounter complex social situations that need to be encoded effectively to allow interaction with others. Yet, principles for organizing the perception of social features from the external world remain poorly characterized. In this large-scale study, we investigated the principles of social perception in dynamic scenes. In the primary data set, we presented 234 movie clips (41 min) containing various social situations to 1,140 participants and asked them to evaluate the presence of 138 social features in each clip. Analyses of the social feature ratings revealed that some features are perceived categorically (present or absent) and others continuously (intensity) and simple social features requiring immediate response are perceived most consistently across participants. To establish the low-dimensional perceptual organization for social features based on movies, we used principal coordinate analysis and consensus clustering for the feature ratings. These dimension reduction analyses revealed that the social perceptual structure can be modeled with eight main dimensions and that behaviorally relevant perceptual categories emerge from these main dimensions. This social perceptual structure generalized from the perception of unrelated Hollywood movie clips to the perception of a full Finnish movie (70 min) and to the perception of static images (n = 468) and across three independent sets of participants (n = 2,254). Based on the results, we propose eight basic dimensions of social perception as a model for rapid social perception where social situations are perceived along eight orthogonal perceptual dimensions (most importantly emotional valence, empathy vs. dominance, and cognitive vs. physical behavior). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
How virtue, competence, and dominance conjointly shape status attainment at work: Integrating person-centered and variable-centered approaches.
Status researchers have recognized virtue, competence, and dominance as distinct, viable routes to attaining status. While acknowledging that these routes could be compatible and may not operate independently, prior research relying on a variable-centered perspective has largely neglected their potentially complex interactions. This article integrates a person-centered perspective with the variable-centered perspective to explore how different routes conjointly shape workplace status. Study 1A (N = 537) employs latent profile analysis, an inductive person-centered method, to re-analyze existing survey data, identifying seven distinct profiles of virtue, competence, and dominance that people use to attain status. Study 1B (N = 988) confirms the existence of these profiles in an independent sample of full-time U.S. workers, albeit with nuanced differences in levels. Across our initial studies, these profiles differ in status attainment, with a profile characterized by high virtue and competence but low dominance associated with the highest status—a key discovery challenging to uncover using the variable-centered approach alone. Study 2 (N = 792), a preregistered experiment manipulating the three routes in hypothetical scenarios, gathers causal evidence confirming these profiles’ varying effectiveness. Study 3 (N = 785), another preregistered experiment using refined manipulations, corroborates the findings of Study 2 and provides evidence for the relevance of these causal insights to real-life workplace contexts. This research has several crucial implications: reaching the top requires a combination of multiple routes; conflating virtue and competence under the umbrella of “prestige” obscures their unique contributions; and dominance’s positive effect on status is not universally applicable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Self-control signals and affords power.
Whom do we perceive as more powerful and prefer to give power to: Those who have self-control or those who lack it? Past theory and research provide divergent predictions. Low self-control can be seen as a form of disinhibition, and disinhibition has been associated with greater power. However, high self-control can be seen as a form of agency, which is associated with greater power. Across seven studies, we found that individuals who exhibited high self-control were seen as more powerful, and given more power, than individuals who exhibited low self-control. This result held when the low or high self-control behavior was chosen either quickly or slowly (Studies 3 and 4), and when exhibiting low versus high self-control entailed the same action but different goals (Studies 5 and 6). Study 6 demonstrated important implications of our findings for goal setting: People were perceived as more powerful and given more power when they had a modest goal but exceeded it than when they had an ambitious goal but failed to meet it, even though in both cases they performed the same action. A meta-analysis of our mediation results showed that people perceived individuals higher in self-control as more assertive and competent, which was associated with greater power perception and then with greater power conferral. Perceived competence also directly mediated the effect of self-control on power conferral. The current research addresses a theoretical debate in the power literature and contributes to a better understanding of how power is perceived and accrued. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Love me, because I rely on you: Dependency-oriented help-seeking as a strategy for human mating.
Existing research has suggested a predominantly negative view of dependency-oriented help. In contrast, the current research aims to test the positive function of dependency-oriented help in intimate relationships where interpersonal dependency is valued. We hypothesized that dependency-oriented help-seeking could function in communicating liking and romantic interests and, therefore, can be instrumental in attracting mates. Our hypothesis was confirmed across nine studies (N = 2,535). For help-seekers, a mate-seeking motivation could positively predict (Study 1) and lead to (Studies 2A–4) dependency-oriented help-seeking behavior tendencies (Studies 1–2B) and actual behavior (Studies 3 and 4). For help-providers, after activating a mating goal, imagining (Studies 5A and 5B) and actually receiving (Study 6) dependency-oriented (vs. autonomy-oriented) help-seeking requests from a potential mate increased help-providers’ romantic interests in that mate. Study 7 further showed the function of dependency-oriented help from the perspective of romantic competitors. As such, people in romantic relationships were more likely to see a potential competitor as a mate poacher when this person asked for dependency-oriented help from their partner. Theoretical and practical implications have been discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Who flourishes in school? The interplay of academic self-concept and personality and its role for academic performance in middle adolescence.
Why are some students more successful than others? We combined motivational and personality predictors and jointly examined the relevance of subject-specific academic self-concepts and Big Five personality traits for academic performance. Based on data from two independent studies of German 9th graders (Study 1: N = 1,508, Mage = 14.98 years, 51% female, 38% immigrant background; Study 2: N = 19,783, Mage = 15.10 years, 50% female, 36% immigrant background), we, first, estimated latent bivariate correlations to investigate the nomological net between these socioemotional characteristics. Second, using latent moderated regression models, we examined the role of the main and interaction effects of both characteristics for academic performance levels and changes assessed by grades and test scores. Finally, we tested whether the relevance of socioemotional characteristics for academic performance differed across sociodemographic characteristics. Five findings stand out: First, we established widely consistent nomological nets between the academic self-concepts and Big Five traits, especially regarding the German self-concept. Second, the domain-specific self-concepts were consistent predictors of different academic performance measures in the respective subject. Third, beyond the established main effects of openness and conscientiousness, all Big Five traits contributed to performance in some way. Fourth, despite some inconsistencies, socioemotional characteristics formed only synergistic interaction effects. Fifth, students’ sociodemographic background was likewise important illustrating main effects on performance and foremost synergistic interaction effects with socioemotional predictors. Our results highlight the complex interplay between motivation, personality, and sociodemographic variables in predicting academic achievement and underline the need to be mindful of this interactive nature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Narrative identity in context: How adults in Japan, Denmark, Israel, and the United States narrate difficult life events.
Integrating the selective reconstruction of the past with an imagined future, narrative identity is a person’s internalized and evolving story of the self, functioning to provide life with some degree of meaning and purpose (McAdams & McLean, 2013). While narrative identity has been found to be associated with a range of psychological and social phenomena (e.g., Adler et al., 2015; McAdams & Guo, 2015), cross-national variation in narrative identity has been only minimally examined. For the purposes of the current inquiry, 438 adults from the United States (N = 102), Japan (N = 122), Israel (N = 103), and Denmark (N = 111) wrote narratives on adversity (low point and life challenge) and completed self-report measures on psychological well-being. Part 1 examined the narrative topics discussed, the frequency of narrative indices (redemption, contamination, agency, communion, meaning-making), and their relationship to well-being across the four countries, finding the most cultural difference in levels of redemption and meaning-making and the kinds of events narrated. Part 2 involved a qualitative, thematic analysis of the Japanese, Danish, and Israeli narratives to derive a set of narrative indices characterizing each country. Several emerged in the Japanese narratives (acceptance, attribution of blame, unresolved), the Danish narratives (balanced affect, communal growth, normality), and Israeli narratives (collective responsibility). Taken together, our findings regarding narratives of adversity support the idea that narrative identity cannot be fully captured without an understanding of culture but needs to instead be studied in tandem with the cultural context in which stories reside. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Socioeconomic status differences in agentic and communal self-concepts: Insights from 6 million people across 133 nations.
Do people of different socioeconomic status (SES) differ in how they see themselves on the Big Two self-concept dimensions of agency and communion? Existent research relevant to this theoretically and socially important question has generally been indirect: It has relied on distant proxies for agentic and communal self-concepts, narrow operationalizations of SES, comparatively small samples, and data from few nations/world regions. By contrast, the present research directly examines the associations between SES and agentic and communal self-concepts, relies on well-validated measures of agency and communion, examines three complementary measures of SES, and uses data from 6 million people (years of age: M = 26.12, SD = 11.50) across 133 nations. Overall, people of higher status saw themselves as somewhat more agentic and as slightly less (or negligibly less) communal. Crucially, those associations varied considerably across nations. We sought to explain that variation with 11 national characteristics and found only three of them to be robustly relevant: National religiosity and pathogen load curbed status differences in agentic self-concepts, and income inequality amplified status differences in communal self-concepts. Our discussion develops theory to explain the importance of national religiosity, pathogen load, and income inequality for socioeconomic status differences in agentic and communal self-concepts and it also describes the substantial societal implications of those differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology - Vol 127, Iss 6