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The mere thought effect is defined in part by the tendency of self-reflective thought to heighten the generation of and reflection on attitude-consistent thoughts. By focusing on individuals’ fears of invalidity, we explored the possibility that …

Sixty-one couples engaged in two video-recorded discussions in which one partner (the support recipient) discussed a personal goal with the other partner (the support provider). The support provider’s visible and invisible support behaviors were …

Although a great deal of attention has been paid to the role of people’s own investment in promoting relationship commitment, less research has considered the possible role of the partner’s investments. An experiment (Study 1) and two combi…

Interpersonal touch seems to promote physical health through its effects on stress-sensitive parameters. However, less is known about the psychological effects of touch. The present study investigates associations between touch and romantic partners&rs…

We conducted five studies to demonstrate that individuals’ beliefs in pure evil (BPE) and in pure good (BPG) are valid and important psychological constructs. First, these studies together demonstrated that BPE and BPG are reliable, unitary, and …

We tested whether individuals can exert control over the expression of attitudinal ambivalence and if this control is exerted with self-presentational concerns. Using the self-presentation paradigm, participants reported more ambivalence about Genetica…

Two studies demonstrated that active efforts to appreciate a romantic partner’s unique point of view (imagine-other perspective-taking) lead individuals lower in self-esteem (LSEs) to feel less loved by their partner and less satisfied with their…

Mortality salience (MS) can lead to a paralyzing terror, and to cope with this, people strive for literal or symbolic immortality. As MS leads to conformity and narrow-mindedness, we predicted that MS would lead to lower creativity, unless creativity i…

A debate exists concerning whether exclusion harms self-esteem. We hypothesized that social exclusion does harm self-esteem, but that this effect is evident only when self-presentational concerns to “appear fine” are minimal or people are unable to alt…

The aim of this research was to examine predictors of pain detection accuracy. In Study 1 (n = 160, undergraduates), the predictors were distal factors (empathy, emotion recognition, family history, and past experiences with pain), and in Study 2 (n = …