New Content From Perspectives on Psychological Science

The Impact of Minority-Race Status on the Cross-Race Effect: A Critical Review
Dilhan Töredi, Jamal K. Mansour, Sian E. Jones, Faye Skelton, Alex McIntyre

Meta-analyses have consistently demonstrated the robustness of the cross-race effect (CRE; i.e., better recognition of same-race faces compared with different-race faces). These analyses have unveiled variations in the dependent variables associated with the CRE across combinations of participant and target races. However, the underlying factors driving these variations remain poorly understood. We posit that although the CRE is robust, its generalizability may be contingent on the specific racial groups compared, particularly when contrasting majority and minority racial groups. In this article, we delve into the dynamics of the CRE across distinct racial groups and explore how minority-race status may influence research outcomes. We considered the articles included in the latest meta-analyses of the CRE with a spotlight on minority-race status. We suggest that minority-race status may explain why many studies considering non-White participants do not show a CRE. The CRE might not be as robust as it appears to be because much of the research on the effect has focused on majority-race participants and minority-race faces. Going forward, researchers should consider incorporating measures relevant to the minority effect, fully crossing participant and target races and studying a greater variety of races.

Let’s Get Together: Toward an Integration of Personality Psychology and Distinct Emotions Research
Eric J. Mercadante, Aaron C. Weidman, Jessica L. Tracy

Emotions play a prominent role in personality psychology, yet personality researchers most frequently study them as broad dimensions (e.g., negative affect) rather than distinct emotions (e.g., fear). We argue that a greater incorporation of distinct emotions into personality research would enrich our understanding of personality. We highlight four ways in which personality research can be expanded by considering distinct emotions as inputs driving personality processes, mediators and moderators of relationships between personality factors and life outcomes, and outputs of personality processes. We then discuss how a personality-based methodological approach might enhance distinct emotions research and highlight an area in which the integration of distinct emotions has already benefited personality science. We conclude by reviewing methodological tools that personality researchers can use to measure distinct emotions empirically.

Can Generative AI Chatbots Emulate Human Connection? A Relationship Science Perspective
Molly G. Smith, Thomas N. Bradbury, Benjamin R. Karney

The development of generative artificial intelligence capable of sustaining complex conversations has created a burgeoning market for companion chatbots promising social and emotional connection. The appeal of these products raises questions about whether chatbots can fulfill the functions of close relationships. Proponents argue that relationships with chatbots can be as meaningful as relationships between humans, whereas critics argue they are a dangerous distraction from genuine connections. This analysis applies theoretical tools from more than 50 years of research on close relationships to evaluate the extent to which human–chatbot interactions meet the definition of and fulfill the functions of close relationships. Interactions between humans and chatbots do possess some characteristic features of close relationships: Humans and chatbots can influence each other and engage in frequent and diverse conversations over time. Chatbots can be responsive in ways humans perceive as supportive, generating feelings of connection and opportunities for growth. Yet because chatbots make only superficial requests of their users, relationships with them cannot provide the benefits of negotiating with and sacrificing for a partner and may reinforce undesirable behaviors. Research that attends to the characteristics of users, chatbots, and their interactions will be crucial for identifying for whom these relationships will be beneficial or harmful.

Gender Bias in Creativity: A Process Model for Understanding the Gender Gap in Creative Achievement
Christa L. Taylor

The gender gap in creative achievement, wherein women are underrepresented as high-achieving creators across domains, has far-reaching consequences for individuals and society. Current explanations of what leads to gender discrepancies in creative achievement, despite minimal differences between men and women in creative potential and ability, are incomplete. One vital factor in this process may be gender bias in the attributions of creativity given that both men and women have been found to attribute greater creativity to men. However, the antecedents and consequences of gender bias in attributions of creativity, as well as the processes by which bias impacts gender differences in creative achievement, remain unclear. This article seeks to fill this gap by presenting a model describing how the social environment shapes gender bias in attributions of creativity, how bias influences gender differences in internal and external factors related to creativity, and how these factors interact to impact gender differences in creative behavior and achievement. The proposed model promotes a dynamic, multilevel understanding of the gender gap in creative achievement and provides a strong theoretical foundation for developing interventions to promote greater creative equity.

Why It May Be Useful to Integrate the Stereotype Content Model and the Interpersonal Perspective
Jenny M. Cundiff, Timothy W. Smith, Adrian C. Williams

This article synthesizes how we think about groups and how we behave during interpersonal situations by integrating the influential stereotype content model from social psychology and the interpersonal perspective in personality and clinical psychology. The empirically derived structural model of the interpersonal circumplex closely resembles the stereotype content model in its general form and specific dimensions. Integration allows researchers to hypothesize and test precise mechanisms linking stereotypes and interpersonal interactions using the common metaconcepts of agency and communion to link cognitions (stereotypes) and behavior. The interpersonal perspective has also been studied extensively, and repeated patterns of interaction have been linked to mental and physical health. Thus, this integration also has the potential to inform our mechanistic understanding of associations between stereotypes and outcomes and thus inform interventions intended to reduce stereotyping and its harmful effects. Integration with the stereotype content model also extends the interpersonal perspective by highlighting the importance of stereotypes as a repetitive influence on interpersonal interactions, similar to interpersonal conceptualizations of personality. This integration of the stereotype content model and the interpersonal tradition helps create a holistic view of the influence of stereotypes during interpersonal situations and explain why benefits or risks may follow.

The Bots Ruining Social Science Are Not Bots at All
Shalom N. Jaffe, Aaron J. Moss, Rachel Hartman, et al.

Researchers who employ online data collection from human subjects currently face a conundrum: It is both essential to how behavioral science functions and threatened by low-quality data. It is often assumed that random, inconsistent, and otherwise incomprehensible data in online surveys comes mainly from bots. Despite this assumption, few studies have directly examined where problematic data comes from, even though identifying the source has important implications for creating the right solutions. We examined this issue on several popular participant-recruitment platforms, including Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Lucid. Across four studies spanning 5 years using multiple methods, we here provide evidence that most of the data-quality problems affecting online research using online panels can be tied to fraudulent users from outside of the United States—not bots. We identify many of the telltale signs that humans leave behind and describe the most effective ways of blocking problematic human responses to address the online data-quality problem.

Judgments of Responsibility for Inequality: A Framework and Review
Casey Lewry, Tania Lombrozo

Decades of psychological research have led to a better understanding of the factors that influence people’s causal explanations of inequalities, such as the racial wealth gap. But our understanding of the psychology of inequality remains limited because this research has largely focused on causal and retrospective judgments. In this article, we argue that two distinctions are valuable for clarifying judgments of responsibility for inequality: the moral–causal distinction and the retrospective–prospective distinction. The moral–causal distinction differentiates judgments of agents’ blameworthiness and obligation (moral) from judgments of their contribution to an outcome (causal). The retrospective–prospective distinction differentiates judgments about the agents, actions, and conditions that led to historical or present inequalities (retrospective) from judgments about what agents can or should do to remedy existing inequalities and prevent them in the future (prospective). We summarize existing research on how sociocultural, emotional, motivational, and cognitive factors affect the four categories of judgments defined by this framework. In doing so, we identify important gaps and highlight directions for future research that will allow us to better explain, predict, and shape judgments relating to inequality.

Social Psychology’s Empty-Self Metaphor and the Replication Crisis
Jack W. Klein, William B. Swann

Since the early 20th century, an emphasis on the causal power of situations in social psychology has fostered the view that the self is an empty vessel filled by the contents of the situation. We label this the “empty-self metaphor,” with incarnations including situationism and elements of theories of self-presentation, self-perception, social identity, the dramaturgical movement, and others. The persistence of this metatheoretical assumption has led to an underappreciation of an enduring, unique self and to the development of contemporary paradigms (e.g., social priming and embodied cognition) that have hinged on the implicit premise that the self is empty or passive. The self is not empty, of course, and new preliminary evidence we have collected indicates that research predicated on the empty-self metaphor is far less likely to replicate. Although we emphasize that the power of the situation has yielded important theoretical and practical insights, we propose that the field would be strengthened by better accounting for the chronic, dispositional motivations that emanate from an enduring self. We offer suggestions—both theoretical and methodological—that can help social psychologists achieve this goal.

How Important Is Language for Human-Like Intelligence?
Gary Lupyan, Hunter Gentry, Martin Zettersten

We use language to communicate our thoughts. But is language merely the expression of thoughts, which are themselves produced by other, nonlinguistic parts of our minds? Or does language play a more transformative role in human cognition, allowing us to have thoughts that we otherwise could (or would) not have? Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science have reinvigorated this old question. We argue that language may hold the key to the emergence of both more general AI systems and central aspects of human intelligence. We highlight two related properties of language that make it such a powerful tool for developing domain-general abilities. First, language offers compact representations that make it easier to represent and reason about many abstract concepts (e.g., exact numerosity). Second, these compressed representations are the iterated output of collective minds. In learning a language, we learn a treasure trove of culturally evolved abstractions. Taken together, these properties mean that a sufficiently powerful learning system exposed to language—whether biological or artificial—learns a compressed model of the world, reverse engineering many of the conceptual and causal structures that support human (and human-like) thought.

Asking Better Questions: Strategic Questioning as a Psychologically Wise Intervention
Patricia Chen

Many effective psychological interventions change maladaptive interpretations of oneself or of one’s context by offering more adaptive narratives, which are associated with desirable responses and outcomes. Psychologically wise interventions from the social-psychological tradition have used this approach to great effect in improving important outcomes across a variety of life domains—including, but not limited to, academic performance, physical and mental health, relationships, organizational culture, and civic behavior. Although these psychologically wise interventions target people’s narratives, they do not focus on teaching effective strategies for pursuing valued goals—let alone a sustained mental habit of considering strategies that can make goal pursuit generally more effective. How might we better support and maintain adaptive narratives that psychologically wise interventions offer, especially in goal-directed, effective, and generalizable ways? I propose a complementary approach: guiding people to ask and answer strategic questions. These are questions that can elicit strategy generation, access, and use. As I explain, asking and answering strategic questions can elicit adaptive appraisals and responses to adversity. Importantly, people can learn an orientation toward self-prompting strategic questions. Understanding and intervening on strategic questioning and answering offers new frontiers for research and practice.

Becoming Aware Through Internal Exploration: Understanding Psychotherapy on Conceptual and Neurobiological Levels
Nick Kabrel, Jaan Aru

Becoming aware of previously unrecognized aspects of one’s psychological and behavioral challenges is one of the central mechanisms of positive psychotherapeutic change. Yet the specific neurocognitive processes that underlie new realizations remain poorly understood. What must occur in one’s mind and brain for awareness to emerge? Here, we present a novel, detailed, process-based framework for understanding how new awareness arises during psychotherapeutic dialogue. Central to this framework are the concepts of “mental navigation” and “cognitive map expansion,” which we explain at both the conceptual and neuroscientific levels. Namely, individuals construct internal world models in the form of cognitive maps. Mental-health difficulties may reflect maps that are overly rigid or narrow. Therapeutic change may thus involve expanding these maps by mentally navigating beyond their current boundaries and forming new trajectories in the conceptual and neural activity space. We conclude by exploring clinical-practice implications as well as offering directions for empirically validating this model.

Socializing While Alone: Loss of Impact and Engagement When Interacting Remotely via Technology
Roy F. Baumeister, Michaela T. Bibby, Dianne M. Tice, Brad J. Bushman

This article pulls together diverse published findings on computer-mediated communication (CMC) to test the hypothesis that it reduces psychological engagement and impact compared with face-to-face (FTF) interactions. Although gaps and questions remain, the evidence mostly confirms reduced engagement and impact. Compared with FTF interactions, CMC elicits less positive emotion, with mixed results for negative emotions. Physiological arousal is often lower. Relationships, trust, and group cohesion develop more slowly (although perhaps eventually reaching the same levels). Information processing is reduced. Inhibitions are also reduced, leading to greater willingness to criticize, to bring up alternate perspectives and suggestions, and to neglect to respond. The disinhibition may improve participation by shy persons. Group performance and group decision-making are often impaired, although some studies found no difference. Teaching and learning go less well. Impact and engagement lose more with asynchronous than synchronous CMC. FTF interactions boost well-being compared with not interacting, but CMC is in between. When CMC augments FTF relationships, there may be benefits, but when it replaces them, there are psychological costs. Technology has enabled marvelous advances in long-distance communication, but there is still no fully satisfactory substitute for actually being together in person.

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