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Past research suggests that deontological judgments, which condemn deliberate harm no matter what the beneficial consequences, typically arise from emotional and intuitive reactions to the harm, whereas utilitarian judgments, which acknowledge the pote…

The present research addresses the relationship between morally valenced behavior and perceptions of self-knowledge, an outcome that has received little attention in moral psychology. We propose that morally valenced behavior is related to subjective p…

Life narratives are the internalized stories that people construct to provide meaning, purpose, and coherence in their lives. Prior research suggests that psychologically healthy and socially engaged adults generally narrate their lives in a prototypic…

Happiness is a topic that ignites both considerable interest and considerable disagreement. Thus far, however, there has been little attempt to characterize people’s lay theories about happiness or explore their consequences. We examined whether …

Perspective-taking often increases generosity in behavior and attributions. We present an intentions-based account to explain how perspective-taking can both decrease and increase moral condemnation. Consistent with past research, we predicted perspect…

Past events are perceived to be temporally more distant when they are unlikely rather than likely to reoccur in the future. This can be because (a) future events that are unlikely to occur are perceived to be temporally remote and (b) these feelings of…

Within social psychology, it is well accepted that trait inference is the dominant tool for understanding others’ behavior. Outside of social psychology, a different consensus has emerged, namely, that people predominantly explain behavior in ter…

Emerging research documents the self-control consequences of individuals’ theories regarding the limited nature of willpower, such that unlimited theorists consistently demonstrate greater self-control than limited theorists. The purpose of the p…

Recent research has demonstrated that conservatives perceive greater similarity to political ingroup members than do liberals. In two studies, we draw from a framework of “anchoring and adjustment” to understand why liberals and conservatives differ in…

In three nationally representative surveys of U.S. residents (N = 10 million) from 1970 to 2015, more Americans in the early 2010s (vs. previous decades) identified as Independent, including when age effects were controlled. More in the early 2010s (vs…