SPSP 2015: The world thinks that atheists are immoral

At the self and identity pre-conference this morning Will Gervais presented a series of studies (available open access right here) suggesting that people seem to automatically associate atheism with a lack of moral character.

SPSP 2015: The Contagious Spread of Affect

I was fortunate to attend the first session of the emotion pre-conference this morning and had a chance to hear about some amazing research conducted by Wendy Mendes (my post-doc advisor), Sara Waters, and Tessa West. The research examined the extent that affective states are transmitted between individuals.

The researchers reasoned that social living organisms are widely characterized by synchronous actions and states--with humans groups being particularly likely to synchronize their emotions and behaviors (here is a profound example of our capacity to synchronize during communal events).

SPSP 2015: We're here in Long Beach!

It's been a few months since I've posted on this blog, and I'm planning to change that over the next several days: It is time for the annual convention of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and we've got three full days packed with social-personality content to share with the blogosphere. I'll be writing a few short posts over the course of the conference--but before I do I want to point out where you can find some of the current and former bloggers on this website, right here at the convention:

Thursday
Katherine Thorson: Poster Session A
Cardiac Vagal Tone predicts Responsivity to Self-Regulatory Thought Inductions: Poster A273

Friday
Amie Gordon: Symposium Session A
Bringing Sleep to Social Psychology: Considering the Effect of Sleep on our Emotions, Relationships and Intergroup Relations
Friday, February 27, 2015, 9:45 AM - 11:00 AM, Promenade Ballroom 104C

Michael Kraus: Symposium Session A
The Politics of Inequality and the Inequality of Politics
Friday, February 27, 2015, 9:45 AM - 11:00 AM, Room 203ABC

Saturday
Jennifer Stellar: Symposium Session I
A Big Helping of Humble Pie: Novel Benefits and New Methods for Cultivating Humility
Saturday, February 28, 2015, 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM, Room 103A

Maya Kuehn: Poster Session E
Rejection Resiliency and Social Influence: Poster E004 

Everyone Gets a Job!

A terrifying graph for any PhD student! (source)

It's late October and that means we are squarely in the middle of job season for psychology PhDs (and PhD candidates). I was hired during the 2011-2012 job cycle, and so I recently switched to the evaluation side of the job process. Sitting on this side of the fence I feel incredibly fortunate to have a job: There are a ton of accomplished graduate students and postdocs with strong records, interesting research ideas, and stellar (!!!) letters of recommendation. If the system were running optimally, most of these applicants would land jobs. If the system were running optimally...

Does Forgiveness Have a Dark Side?

Forgiveness is widely considered to be a psychologically healthy and morally virtuous approach to coping with victimization. Research suggests that people who forgive more easily are happier and healthier than those who hold grudges. In addition, forgiveness interventions have been shown to reduce stress reactivity, increase optimism, and facilitate reconciliation with offenders.

What Kinds of Support Are Most Supportive?

Numerous studies have demonstrated the critical importance of social support for physical and mental health. For example, one study showed that stressed middle-aged men with higher levels of available emotional support were significantly less likely to die over a 7-year period than those who lacked such support. Another study found that an absence of social support was a major predictor of depression.

In our everyday lives, we often have opportunities to provide support to friends, family members, or coworkers, but it can be hard to know how to do it in the most effective way. Research in social psychology has revealed some principles for giving good support that challenge common assumptions. Here are three of them.  

Crossing Class Boundaries

Yesterday the New York Times published an opinion piece written by University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Professor, Stephane Cote and I on the challenges of crossing social class boundaries. You can find the article here. This blog post accompanies that article with a few notes about the research.

Does Power Help or Hurt Perspective-Taking?

First comes love, then comes the realization that we are navigating life’s journey with another person who may have different thoughts, feelings, and beliefs than us. How do we deal with having differing viewpoints from our romantic partners? Perspective-taking is a fundamental social skill that helps us smoothly steer through the many bumps in the road, from picking out a thoughtful anniversary gift to helping us reach a compromise on a contentious issue. When people are able to consider their partner’s point of view, both they and their partners report being more satisfied with their relationship (Long, 1990). Although this basic skill is fundamental and beneficial, not everyone is good at perspective-taking, particularly in their romantic relationships (Kenny & Acitelli, 2001). So who is good at perspective-taking and who is lacking? To answer this question, I turned to the research on power. I was curious to find out whether feeling powerful in a romantic relationship might lead people to be better, or worse, perspective-takers.

Power is potent, affecting how people think, feel, and interact with others. Although thinking about powerful people might bring to mind the caricature of a power-hungry CEO, the reality is that power is not just in the workplace, it is part of all of our relationships, shaping how we interact with our parents, friends, and romantic partners. So how exactly does it shape our relationships? Or, in our case, our ability to step into our partner’s shoes? Well, the old adage, “power corrupts,” suggests that powerful people should be selfish, caring only about getting their own way and paying little attention to what their romantic partners are thinking and feeling. And there is research to support this – people are less likely to take strangers’ perspectives when they feel powerful (Galinsky et al., 2006) and in families, powerful members are less likely to perspective take (Barber, 1984). But on the other hand, for romantic relationships to survive, people can’t just be selfish—they have to think about what is best for the relationship, which means considering their partner’s point of view. Power helps people focus on and pursue their goals (Guinote, 2007), so perhaps power might actually help people become better perspective-takers in romantic relationships because it focuses them on maintaining their relationship?