Your Psychology Psychology articles and news

This research introduces low goal ambivalence as a relevant correlate of goal self-concordance. In three studies, we tested the hypothesis that university freshmen’s ambivalence toward the goal of completing their degree mediates the effect of go…

We examined changes in loneliness over time. Study 1 was a cross-temporal meta-analysis of 48 samples of American college students who completed the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale (total N = 13,041). In Study 1, loneliness declined from 1978 to 2009 (d …

Relatively few studies have focused on the connections between self-esteem and basic personality dimensions. The purpose of the present studies was to examine whether self-esteem level and self-esteem instability were associated with the Big Five perso…

The current study analyzes data from a national probability panel sample of New Zealanders (N = 5,091) to examine stability and change in political orientation over four consecutive yearly assessments (2009-2012) following the 2007/2008 global financia…

The ability to communicate with others is one of the most important human social functions, yet communication is not always investigated from a social perspective. This research examined the role that shared social identity plays in communication effec…

Before approaching situations, individuals frequently imagine “what would happen, if . . . .” Such prefactual thought can promote confidence and facilitate behavior preparation when the upcoming situation can benefit from forethought, but it also delay…

Individuals attempting to label their emotions look for a plausible source of their physiological arousal. Co-occurrence of plausible sources can lead to the misattribution of real (or bogus) physiological arousal, resulting in physically attractive in…

Reactions to decisions are shaped by both outcome and procedural fairness. Moreover, outcome and procedural fairness interact to influence beliefs and behaviors. However, different types of “process/outcome” interaction effects have emerged. Many studi…

The principle of complementarity in interpersonal theory states that an actor’s behavior tends to “pull, elicit, invite, or evoke” responses from interaction partners who are similar in affiliation (i.e., warmth vs. hostility) and opposite in con…

We explored a novel task paradigm where participants from the online work marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk were given the choice to quit or continue an unfinished boring task for identical economic rewards. In Studies 1a and 1b, about half the partic…