We developed a Metacognitive Offloading Optimization Task (MOOT) whereby participants were instructed to score as many points as possible by accessing words from a presented list either by remembering them (worth 10 points each) or by offloading them (worth less than 10 points each). Results indicated that participants were sensitive to the value of the offloaded items such that when offloaded items

While prediction errors (PEs) have long been recognized as critical in associative learning, emerging evidence indicates their significant role in episodic memory formation. This series of four experiments sought to elucidate the cognitive mechanisms underlying the enhancing effects of PEs related to aversive events on memory for surrounding neutral events. Specifically, we aimed to determine whether

Deciphering whether and which mental processes are accessible for metacognitive judgments is a key question to understand higher cognitive functions. Paralleling the crucial role of reaction times (RT) for unraveling the temporal sequence of mental processes, a comparable chronometric approach can be employed at the second-order level through introspective reaction times (iRT) measures. Although mean

The ability to discover patterns or rules from our experiences is critical to science, engineering, and art. In this article, we examine how much people's discovery of patterns can be incentivized by financial rewards. In particular, we investigate a classic category learning task for which the effect of financial incentives is unknown (Shepard et al., 1961). Across five experiments, we find no effect

Most models of verbal working memory (WM) consider attention as an important determinant of WM. The detailed nature of attentional processes and the different dimensions of verbal WM they support remains, however, poorly investigated. The present study distinguished between attentional capacity (scope of attention) and attentional control (control of attention) and examined their respective role for

Our ability to maintain a consistent attentional state is essential to many aspects of daily life. Still, despite our best efforts, attention naturally fluctuates between more and less vigilant states. Previous work has shown that offering performance-based rewards or incentives can help to buffer against attentional lapses. However, such work is generally focused on long timescales and, critically

People leave groups. We examined the psychological consequences for the remaining group members; specifically, whether the departure of a member can produce feelings of ostracism (being excluded and ignored). We manipulated systematically the number of group members who left (zero, one, or two out of the two other group members) during a get to know you interaction (Study 1), a word creativity task

Successful emotion regulation (ER) requires effective strategy selection. Research suggests that disengagement strategies (e.g., distraction) are more often selected than engagement strategies (e.g., reappraisal) as emotional experiences intensify. However, the extent to which ER strategy choice in controlled circumstances reflects strategy usage during complex, multimodal events is not well understood

Gifts are one important way in which individuals come to own and consume the products that they do. The current work investigates a novel consequence of acquiring and consuming items in this way—recipients draw inferences about givers' views of them (reflected appraisals) which, in turn, can influence related aspects of recipients' identity. We report five studies that test our predictions, distinguish

Trustworthiness is crucial in social interactions that depend on other's information. For example, an interaction partner's trustworthiness determines whose advice we act on in learning contexts, whom we choose to invest in during economic decisions, or even whom we decide to cooperate with. However, how perceived trustworthiness influences advice following in value-based decision-making when the trustworthiness

Repeatedly presenting a neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) together with a positive or negative stimulus (unconditioned stimulus, US) typically changes liking of the CS. An important question is whether a subsequent extinction phase where the CS is presented without the US extinguishes such evaluative conditioning (EC) effects. In this regard, it is crucial to consider that an extinction procedure

How do we make sense of our surroundings? A widely recognized field in cognitive psychology suggests that many important functions like memory of incidents, reasoning, and attention depend on the way we segment the ongoing stream of perception (Zacks & Swallow, 2007). An open question still is, how the structure generated from a perceptual stream translates into behavior. To address this question,

It has been claimed that deliberately making errors while studying, even when the correct answers are provided, can enhance memory for the correct answers, a phenomenon termed the derring effect. Such deliberate erring has been shown to outperform other learning techniques, including copying and underlining, elaborative studying with concept mapping, and synonym generation. To date, however, the derring

Many organizations struggle to attract a demographically diverse workforce. How does adding a measurable goal to a public diversity commitment-for example, "We care about diversity" versus "We care about diversity and plan to hire at least one woman or racial minority for every White man we hire"-impact application rates from women and racial minorities? Extant psychological theory offers competing

Reward devaluation theory (RDT) posits that some depressed individuals may not only be biased toward negative material but also actively avoid positive material (i.e., devaluing reward). Although there are intuitive, everyday life consequences for individuals who "devalue reward" or positivity, prior work has not established if (and how) reward devaluation manifests in tasks that encompass aspects

Does aligning misinformation content with individuals' core moral values facilitate its spread? We investigate this question in three behavioral experiments (N1a = 615; N1b = 505; N₂ = 533) that examine how the alignment of audience values and misinformation framing affects sharing behavior, in conjunction with analyzing real-world Twitter data (N = 20,235; 809,414 tweets) that explores how aligning

How do people predict the outcome of an event from a set of possible outcomes? One might expect people to predict whichever outcome they believe to be most likely to arise. However, we document a robust disconnect between what people predict and what they believe to be most likely. This disconnect arises because people consider not only relative likelihood but also absolute likelihood when predicting

People attribute purposes in both mundane and profound ways-such as when thinking about the purpose of a knife and the purpose of a life. In three studies (total N = 13,720 observations from N = 3,430 participants), we tested whether these seemingly very different forms of purpose attributions might actually involve the same cognitive processes. We examined the impacts of four factors on purpose attributions

This research examined the utility of providing people with information about the actual impact of their donations. Results of a field survey (N = 1062) and three controlled experiments (N = 881) reveal the importance of actual impact information in promoting repeated donations and retaining repeated donors. Exposing participants to information about the actual impact of their donations—compared with

A live discussion experiment was designed to test the effects of highly empathic (vs. moderately empathic) listening on solitude experiences. Participants were assigned to three conditions in which they: 1) Discussed a negative personal experience with a confederate (ostensibly another participant) exhibiting highly empathic listening; 2) Discussed an experience with a confederate exhibiting moderately

Does a black-and-white contrast background lead to more extreme moral judgments? Zarkadi and Schnall (2013) found in their Study 1 (N = 111) that, indeed, exposing English-speaking participants to a black-and-white (versus two other-colored conditions) background polarized participants' judgments in a moral dilemma task. This study supported a moral intuitionist model of moral judgment, lent further

Various neuroscientific theories maintain that brain oscillations are important for neuronal computation, but opposing views claim that these macroscale dynamics are ‘exhaust fumes’ of more relevant processes. Here, we approach the question of whether oscillations are functional or epiphenomenal by distinguishing between measurements and processes, and by reviewing whether causal or inferentially useful

We argue that one reason why people consider others' ideological beliefs (i.e., progressive vs. conservative) is that people profit by predicting others' exploration behavior from their beliefs. Eight experiments confirmed that people more readily invested in progressives when switching to novel options (i.e., exploration) was more profitable than staying with valuable resources (i.e., exploitation)

Food anthropomorphism, a prevalent and effective marketing tactic, can positively influence consumer perception and purchasing behavior. However, recent scholarly attention has been drawn to the potential negative consequences of consuming anthropomorphized food. The current research focused on how and why food anthropomorphism affected the dehumanization of unfamiliar others and the negative downstream

Efforts to promote women in leadership have led to some high profile successes, yet unequal representation of women and men in such positions persists. The media often portrays the gap as women's underrepresentation. We examine whether reframing this gap as men's overrepresentation elicits greater anger and increases intentions and behaviors to remediate the disparity. In a meta-analysis of three pilot

What inhibits people from asking for help? Four studies of fully employed British and American participants (N = 1973, including three pre-registered studies) document the negative effect of lay beliefs about status on help-seeking. Specifically, I find that zero-sum beliefs about status—the belief that one employee's success comes at other employees' expense—discourage people from asking their colleagues

People vary greatly in their responses to being ignored and excluded by others (i.e., ostracism). Based on previous research, responses to ostracism are typically classified as prosocial, antisocial, and withdrawal behavior. However, studying these behaviors in isolation can limit our understanding of the decision-making process behind these behaviors. Offering multiple response options provides deeper

Recent research has indicated that nostalgia is associated with, or fosters, favorable responses to innovative technology and in particular artificial intelligence (AI). However, prior studies failed to differentiate between the relational and functional uses of AI agents, resulting in an incomplete understanding of the role that nostalgia plays in facilitating acceptance of innovation. The current

Donating money to worthy social causes is one of the most impactful and efficient forms of altruism, but skepticism often clouds perceptions of donors' motives for giving. We propose a solution that reduces this skepticism: Instead of giving a single large donation, donors can partition their donations into multiple, smaller ones. Ten preregistered studies with 3,816 participants supported this idea

Do people use their statistical expertise selectively to reach preferred conclusions when evaluating scientific evidence, with those more expert showing more preferential bias? We investigated this motivated numeracy account of evidence evaluation but came to a different account for biased evaluation. Across three studies (N = 2,799), participants interpreted numerical data from gun control intervention

It is well-established that people make predictions during language comprehension--the nature and specificity of these predictions, however, remain unclear. For example, do comprehenders routinely make predictions about which words (and phonological forms) might come next in a conversation, or do they simply make broad predictions about the gist of the unfolding context? Prior EEG studies using tightly

Experience is known to be a key element involved in the modulation of face-processing abilities as manifested by the inversion effect, other-race, and other-age effects. Yet, it is unclear how exposure refines internal perceptual representations of faces to give rise to such behavioral effects. To address this issue, we investigated short- and long-term experienced stimulus history on face processing

Individual differences in the dynamics of attention control were examined in two studies. Participants performed mouse tracker versions of Stroop (Studies 1 and 2) and flankers (Study 2), along with additional measures of attention control and working memory to better examine individual differences in how conflict resolution processes unfold over time. Attention control abilities were related to the

Understanding social events requires assigning the participating entities to roles such as agent and patient, a mental operation that is reportedly effortless. We investigated whether, in processing visual scenes, role assignment is accomplished automatically (i.e., when the task does not require it), based on visuospatial information, without requiring semantic or linguistic encoding of the stimuli

Subjective confidence is an important factor in our decision making, but how confidence arises is a matter of debate. A number of computational models have been proposed that integrate confidence into sequential sampling models of decision making, in which evidence accumulates across time to a threshold. An influential example of this approach is the relative balance of evidence hypothesis, in which

Research on approach/avoidance training (AAT) effects shows that approach (i.e., reducing the distance between the self and a stimulus) leads to more positive evaluations of stimuli than avoidance (i.e., increasing the distance between the self and a stimulus). The present experiments relied on a grounded cognition approach to extend this finding by investigating the framing-dependency of AAT effects

The concept of trust in artificial intelligence (AI) has been gaining increasing relevance for understanding and shaping human interaction with AI systems. Despite a growing literature, there are disputes as to whether the processes of trust in AI are similar to that of interpersonal trust (i.e., in fellow humans). The aim of the present article is twofold. First, we provide a systematic test of an

From rising disparities in income to limited socio-political representation for minority groups, inequality is a topic of perennial interest for contemporary society. Research in the evolutionary sciences has started to investigate how social structure allows inequality to evolve, but is developing in silo from existing work in the social and cognitive sciences. I synthesise these literatures to present

The 4-day working week is gaining interest, with international trials reporting enhanced staff wellbeing and performance, despite spending less time on the job. Here, we argue that improved performance on a 4-day working week arises through two psychological mechanisms of recovery and motivation: because better rested, better motivated brains, create better work.

Do people change their preferences when they are offered the same risky lotteries at different times (now vs. the future)? Construal level theory (CLT) suggests that people do because our mental representation of events is moderated by how near or distant such events are in time. According to CLT, in the domain of risk preferences, psychological distance causes payoffs and probabilities to be differentially

Past investigations into the connection between space and numbers have revealed its potential vulnerability to external influences such as cultural factors, including language. This study aims to examine whether language moderates the association between space and number in the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect, which is demonstrated in an interaction between number magnitude

Individual contributors to a collaborative task are often rewarded for going above and beyond—salespeople earn commissions, athletes earn performance bonuses, and companies award special parking spots to their employee of the month. How do we decide when to reward collaborators, and are these decisions closely aligned with how responsible they were for the outcome of a collaboration? In Experiments

Evaluations play a critical role in the allocation of resources and opportunities. Although evaluation systems are a cornerstone of organizational and market processes, they often reinforce social and economic inequalities. The body of organizational research on inequality and evaluations is extensive, but it is also fragmented, siloed within specific contexts and types of evaluations (e.g., hiring

Traditional explanations for stereotypes assume that they result from deficits in humans (ingroup-favoring motives, cognitive biases) or their environments (majority advantages, real group differences). An alternative explanation recently proposed that stereotypes can emerge when exploration is costly. Even optimal decision makers in an ideal environment can inadvertently form incorrect impressions

Psychologists have long been intrigued by decision-induced changes in preferences where making a decision strengthens one's relative preference between more and less preferred options. This phenomenon has been explained through two prominent theories: a dissonance account, which suggests that it results from the decision maker's attempt to minimize an unpleasant emotional-motivational state of "dissonance

What makes an object complex? Complexity comes in many different forms. Some objects are visually complex but mechanistically simple (e.g., a hairbrush). Other objects are the opposite; they look simple but work in a complex way (e.g., an iPhone). Is one kind of complexity more fundamental to how we represent, attend to, and remember objects? Although most existing psychological research on complexity

How do individuals learn and perceive social norms across situations and groups? We propose a three-stage process of social norm perception in which individuals first enter situations with a prior expectation of social norms that may apply, then they encounter and weigh norm information, and finally they integrate this norm information with their prior expectation. In addition, we discuss definitions

A key puzzle in social network research is why people have networks in theory but fail to extract resources from them in practice. We propose the concept of mobilization capacity—one’s efficiency in extracting resources from networks—to help explain this gap. Mobilization capacity involves several critical microprocesses that account for what often appears as error in network models, given that having

As rapid organizational and technological change makes boundaries within workplaces more permeable, employees are gaining unprecedented access to new people and information. This both increases opportunities for collaboration and heightens the risk of attention overload. While scholars have investigated overload with respect to “what” employees attend to, little research has examined the challenges

Scholarship on entrepreneurship in top management journals has disproportionately focused on elites, leading our field to develop a great deal of understanding about a select few in society. Collectively, this bias has led to deeper expertise on elite entrepreneurs relative to entrepreneurs with different backgrounds, such as those from marginalized populations. We note the conceptual and prescriptive

The standard method for addressing the consequences of misinformation is the provision of a correction in which the misinformation is directly refuted. However, the impact of misinformation may also be successfully addressed by introducing or bolstering alternative beliefs with opposite evaluative implications. Six preregistered experiments clarified important processes influencing the impact of bypassing

An age-old adage in psychology is that people’s behavior emanates from or is an expression of their motivation and their ability. We posit that work behaviors and attitudes also depend on employees’ perceptions of motivation and ability, pertaining to others and themselves. The processes through which perceptions of motivation and ability influence employees are conceptually distinct from effects attributable

In hybrid foraging, foragers search for multiple targets in multiple patches throughout the foraging session, mimicking a range of real-world scenarios. This research examines outcome uncertainty, the prevalence of different target types, and the reward value of targets in human hybrid foraging. Our empirical findings show a consistent tendency toward risk-averse behavior in hybrid foraging. That is

As social interactions increasingly move to digital platforms, communicators confront new factors that enhance or diminish virtual interactions. Texting abbreviations, for instance, are now pervasive in digital communication-but do they enhance or diminish interactions? The present study examines the influence of texting abbreviation usage on interpersonal perceptions. We explore how texting abbreviations

Black individuals with phenotypically African features tend to experience heightened discrimination and mistreatment. The current research examined how racial phenotypicality and prototypicality effect hate crime reporting metrics and beliefs about who evaluators are represented #BlackLivesMatter. Across five studies (N = 876), results indicate that, compared to low racially phenotypic Black targets