Your Psychology Psychology articles and news

The current study investigated the effect of distance on medium preferences in interpersonal communication. Five experiments showed that people’s preference for using pictures (vs. words) is increasingly higher when communicating with temporally,…

Guenther, C.L, & Timberlake, E.A. (2012). The Motivated Self: Self-Affirmation and the Better-Than-Average Effect. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Original DOI: 10.1177/0146167212457074)

According to the resource-depletion model, self-control is a limited resource that is depleted after a period of exertion. Evidence consistent with this model indicates that self-control relies on glucose metabolism and glucose supplementation to deple…

Does local context (e.g., city of residence) matter for self and well-being? We theorized that it does because local contexts diverge in prevalent historically-derived ideas, norms, and products. Through historical analysis, studies of norms (tightness…

This research examined whether individual differences in cultural identification can be discerned at zero acquaintance. This issue was examined in Hong Kong, where the idiosyncrasy of cultural identification is a salient social-psychological issue. The…

While majority of the literature documents the preponderance of social identity–related biases in favor of in-group members, this research investigates factors that may attenuate the bias. Examining intergroup bias within the realm of information…

Past research has found that primes can automatically initiate unconscious goal striving. Recent models of priming have suggested that this effect can be moderated by validation processes. According to a goal-validation perspective, primes should cause…

People differ regarding their “Big Three” mate preferences of attractiveness, status, and interpersonal warmth. We explain these differences by linking them to the “Big Two” personality dimensions of agency/competence and communion/warmth. The similari…

Social-categorical knowledge is partially grounded in proprioception. In Study 1, participants describing “hard” and “soft” politicians, and “hard” and “soft” scientists used different “hard” and “soft” traits for the two groups, suggesting that the me…

Contact researchers have largely overlooked the potential for negative intergroup contact to increase prejudice. In Study 1, we tested the interaction between contact quantity and valence on prejudice toward Black Australians (n = 1,476), Muslim Austra…