Posts

June 18, 2013

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9:55 PM | Psychology At the Movies: Essentialist Musings in Man of Steel

www.imdb.com Yesterday, my spouse and I dropped our newborn daughter off with Grandma and then popped over to the local theater to see this summer's much anticipated comic-book blockbuster Man of Steel. By any standard, Man of Steel is exceptionally light when it comes to philosophical musings: The plot is predictably linear--good guys fight bad guys who are trying to kill them. At first glance, it may seem like a stretch to write an entire blog entry (for a psychology blog) about the […]

Kraus MW & Keltner D (2013). Social Class Rank, Essentialism, and Punitive Judgment., Journal of personality and social psychology, PMID: 23713698

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June 13, 2013

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11:26 PM | The Daddy Chronicles II: Parenting Boosts Immune Function

I've been doing this whole parenting thing for almost three months now and it has been simultaneously gratifying, terrifying, exhausting, and fascinating. One thing I haven't been doing is sleeping, and because of this I have had a lot of time to read up on some neat research on new parents. Last time I wrote about how parenting reduces Testosterone in men. Today I blog about the relationship between parenting and immune function. Can parenting boost the immune system? Read More-> […]

Sneed, R., Cohen, S., Turner, R. & Doyle, W. (2012). Parenthood and Host Resistance to the Common Cold, Psychosomatic Medicine, 74 (6) 567-573. DOI: 10.1097/PSY.0b013e31825941ff

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June 09, 2013

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3:54 PM | Four (Wrong) Ways To Interpret Links Between Genes and Education

Last week Science published a neat little paper examining links between specific human DNA sequences and educational attainment. The paper, which is a bit shorter than the list of authors who worked on the project, examined a total sample of more than 120,000 participants who had their entire genome sequenced for a number of small clusters of repeating nucleotides (single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs). They then examined all the SNPs and their associations with the level of educational […]

Rietveld, C. A. (2013). GWAS of 126,599 individuals identifies genetic variants associated with educational attainment, Science, Other: Link

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June 05, 2013

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9:00 PM | Why So Serious?* An Insider’s Guide to the Study of Smiling and Dominance

The toughest grad students at the University of Illinois (J. Hepler & N. Segal) Over the years, one of my favorite things to hear about in research is the initial personal events that inspired researchers to conduct their investigations into human behavior (e.g., Did your neglectful mother lead you to a study of anxious attachment?). In today’s blog post I would like to talk about the inspiration for a study I conducted last year, with my my colleague David Chen, examining what […]

Kraus, M. & Chen, T. (2013). A winning smile? Smile intensity, physical dominance, and fighter performance., Emotion, 13 (2) 270-279. DOI: 10.1037/a0030745

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May 07, 2013

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5:41 PM | Group gender composition: Does it matter?

source When I was younger, I can remember being split into teams in gym class and different tables in art class and having one question: how many girls and how many boys are in my group? Depending on the activity, it seemed important to know this so you could assess your chances for success. More boys on your team, and you might be more likely to win dodgeball. More girls at your art table, and you might paint a better mural. An adult might have told me that was silly - how many […]

West, T., Heilman, M., Gullett, L., Moss-Racusin, C. & Magee, J. (2012). Building blocks of bias: Gender composition predicts male and female group members’ evaluations of each other and the group, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48 (5) 1209-1212. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.04.012

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April 20, 2013

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6:07 PM | SWAG: Racial Bias in Pain Perception

Tom Brady is no stranger to pain (source) Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG). This week in SWAG we read an article about racial biases in perceptions of others’ pain. The American medical field has a long […]

Trawalter S, Hoffman KM & Waytz A (2012). Racial bias in perceptions of others' pain., PloS one, 7 (11) PMID: 23155390

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April 18, 2013

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5:02 PM | The Daddy Chronicles: What Happened To My Testosterone?

Zoë at two weeks I'm not sure how many of you know this, but on March 19th of this year I became a new daddy. It's hard to describe the meaning of this event and its impact on my life, but here is a useful comparison that might put things into perspective: My dissertation was accepted for publication on the same day that my daughter was born and despite the near month passing, I still haven't filed the publication forms for the paper. Fatherhood changes the way I see the world […]

Gettler LT, McDade TW, Feranil AB & Kuzawa CW (2011). Longitudinal evidence that fatherhood decreases testosterone in human males., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108 (39) 16194-9. PMID: 21911391

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March 21, 2013

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12:23 AM | How to End a Bad Relationship for Good

Sometimes we find ourselves in relationships that make us miserable more than they make us happy, relationships that we know in our hearts are not right, yet still have a hold on us. If this sounds like you, or someone you care about, here are some research-based strategies you may not have considered before for ending it for good and getting on with your life. Read More->

Aron, A. (2005). Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated With Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love, Journal of Neurophysiology, 94 (1) 327-337. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00838.2004

Schweiger Gallo I & Gollwitzer PM (2007). Implementation intentions: a look back at fifteen years of progress., Psicothema, 19 (1) 37-42. PMID: 17295981

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March 07, 2013

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10:14 PM | SWAG: The American Choice Fixation

Yes. I Exist! (source) Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG). Right before our SWAG meeting this week, I attended a laboratory meeting of a colleague here at the University of Illinois. One of the graduate students […]

Savani K, Markus HR, Naidu NV, Kumar S & Berlia N (2010). What counts as a choice? U.S. Americans are more likely than Indians to construe actions as choices., Psychological science, 21 (3) 391-8. PMID: 20424076

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February 21, 2013

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2:47 AM | SWAG: Thoughts as Physical Objects

Ideas as Objects (Source) Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG). We typically think of thoughts as mental constructs without physical properties. And yet, it is remarkably common to use physical metaphors when […]

Briñol P, Gascó M, Petty RE & Horcajo J (2013). Treating thoughts as material objects can increase or decrease their impact on evaluation., Psychological science, 24 (1) 41-7. PMID: 23184587

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February 15, 2013

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5:27 AM | Do it for Future You

Source It's only a month and a half into the New Year, and most of us have already abandoned our New Year's resolutions. We had the best of intentions, but our intentions only got us so far, and eventually we fell back into our old habits--eating and drinking too much, exercising and sleeping too little. Why are we so bad at this? There are a number of reasons for our difficulty with New Year's Resolutions and other efforts to make positive changes in our lives. For example, […]

Hershfield, H. (2011). Future self-continuity: how conceptions of the future self transform intertemporal choice, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1235 (1) 30-43. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06201.x

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February 08, 2013

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5:27 PM | SWAG: I'm good enough, I'm smart enough... and I give up!

wikipedia.org Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG). This week we read a recent collection of studies written by Kathleen Vohs and her colleagues (2013) about goal disengagement and self-affirmation. Usually […]

Vohs KD, Park JK & Schmeichel BJ (2013). Self-affirmation can enable goal disengagement., Journal of personality and social psychology, 104 (1) 14-27. PMID: 23106251

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January 20, 2013

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7:26 AM | How Much Inequality Is Too Much?

“Of all the babies that die every year, what percent should be from the richest 20% and what percent should be from the poorest 20%?” – Mike Norton In the Saturday morning session, some of my favorite social psychologists/researchers presented their ongoing work on lay beliefs about inequality in the United States. It is encouraging to see the new generation of psychology scholars taking on important issues related to social justice and inequality! The first talk was presented by […]

January 19, 2013

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2:39 AM | SPSP 2013: Notes For Starting Your Academic Career

“There is no other job that allows you to pursue questions that interests you, and then pay you to do it. But, there are tradeoffs.” –Chuck Carver In the second morning symposium session at SPSP this year, three hugely influential scholars in our field discussed some challenges that new faculty members must contend with early in their career. Having just started an academic job of my own at the University of Illinois, I found this […]

December 11, 2012

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6:41 AM | Tabula Rasa: Do genes influence personality?

wikipedia.org If I were to ask you the simple question, "Do you think that genes influence your personality?" The first thing you might think, is that I'm asking you a stupid question. After all, nearly all our lay beliefs about the world include beliefs that some of our genetic material influences who we become as people. And though we do believe, to varying degrees, that our experiences shape who are, I'm sure we can't think of all that many people who believe, like […]

Whitfield, C. (2003). Gene Expression Profiles in the Brain Predict Behavior in Individual Honey Bees, Science, 302 (5643) 296-299. DOI: 10.1126/science.1086807

Derringer, J., Krueger, R., Dick, D., Saccone, S., Grucza, R., Agrawal, A., Lin, P., Almasy, L., Edenberg, H., Foroud, T. & Nurnberger, J. (2010). Predicting Sensation Seeking From Dopamine Genes: A Candidate-System Approach, Psychological Science, 21 (9) 1282-1290. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610380699

de Moor, M., Costa, P., Terracciano, A., Krueger, R., de Geus, E., Toshiko, T., Penninx, B., Esko, T., Madden, P., Derringer, J. & Amin, N. (2010). Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for personality, Molecular Psychiatry, 17 (3) 337-349. DOI: 10.1038/mp.2010.128

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November 30, 2012

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9:00 AM | Friday Fun: Psychology at the Movies III

www.imdb.com It's been a few months since we last discussed movies on PYM. Since my spouse and I moved to Chambana, we have had a lot of time to enjoy $5.50 movie nights at the local cinema. Yeah, you read that right, movie tickets are sold on the cheap out here in the Midwest! As in my previous posts examining psychological constructs in movies, I'll proceed by describing what happens in a film--roughly from my own memory--and then I will link those events to a construct studied […]

Kraus MW, Piff PK, Mendoza-Denton R, Rheinschmidt ML & Keltner D (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor., Psychological review, 119 (3) 546-72. PMID: 22775498

Seery, M. (2011). Resilience: A Silver Lining to Experiencing Adverse Life Events?, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20 (6) 390-394. DOI: 10.1177/0963721411424740

Swann, W., de la Ronde, C. & Hixon, J. (1994). Authenticity and positivity strivings in marriage and courtship., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66 (5) 857-869. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.66.5.857

van IJzendoorn, M. (1995). Adult attachment representations, parental responsiveness, and infant attachment: A meta-analysis on the predictive validity of the Adult Attachment Interview., Psychological Bulletin, 117 (3) 387-403. DOI: 10.1037//0033-2909.117.3.387

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October 28, 2012

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9:36 PM | Obama or Romney? Leave the decision to your parents!

Tell your parents that obedience is overrated! (source) Whenever I teach a group of undergraduates I always hope that I will be shaping their young political minds in meaningful ways. I hope that our discussions in class will open their eyes to the various and important social issues of our time, and maybe lead to greater awareness of injustice, unfairness, and inequality in society. I've often thought that this is my most important role as a Professor. I also think that this is one of […]

Fraley, R., Griffin, B., Belsky, J. & Roisman, G. (2012). Developmental Antecedents of Political Ideology: A Longitudinal Investigation From Birth to Age 18 Years, Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797612440102

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October 19, 2012

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12:27 PM | Friday Fun: Oxytocin and the Zombie Apocalypse

I got your oxytocin right here! (source) If you've been watching AMC's riveting series about zombie apocalypse, the Walking Dead, then you're probably into blood and guts like me. You might also be watching because you're interested in the moral dilemmas that the characters face during each twist and turn of fate. As the misfortune adds up and the body count rises, some of the most honest and trustworthy people must do some pretty terrible things all in the name of survival! […]

De Dreu CK, Greer LL, Handgraaf MJ, Shalvi S, Van Kleef GA, Baas M, Ten Velden FS, Van Dijk E & Feith SW (2010). The neuropeptide oxytocin regulates parochial altruism in intergroup conflict among humans., Science (New York, N.Y.), 328 (5984) 1408-11. PMID: 20538951

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October 15, 2012

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2:28 PM | Is there a feminine side to dominance?

Is there a female dominance hormone? (source) Today on PYM we are pleased to bring you a guest blog from Emily Plutov. Emily is an advanced undergraduate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who has recently become interested in social psychology research on power and dominance. When it comes to research on the hormonal correlates of dominance behaviors, what becomes clear is that males have garnered considerable attention within this sphere. As Michael mentioned in a […]

Stanton SJ & Schultheiss OC (2007). Basal and dynamic relationships between implicit power motivation and estradiol in women., Hormones and behavior, 52 (5) 571-80. PMID: 17949722

Stanton SJ & Schultheiss OC (2009). The hormonal correlates of implicit power motivation., Journal of research in personality, 43 (5) 942. PMID: 20161646

Sapienza P, Zingales L & Maestripieri D (2009). Gender differences in financial risk aversion and career choices are affected by testosterone., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106 (36) 15268-73. PMID: 19706398

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October 09, 2012

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4:12 PM | Gender Bias in Academics Continued: An Experimental Test in the Hard Sciences

Why are women underrepresented in the STEM fields? A recent advisory council to the President concluded that at the current rate of training scientists and engineers, we will have a deficit of 1,000,000 workers over the next decade. The council suggests that one way to close this gap is to increase training and retention of women. Women are drastically underrepresented in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math). Some people have suggested that this underrepresentation is […]

Moss-Racusin CA, Dovidio JF, Brescoll VL, Graham MJ & Handelsman J (2012). Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, PMID: 22988126

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October 04, 2012

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1:14 AM | For The Love of Humanity: The Psychology of Thinking Globally

Source When was the last time you thought about the fact that you are a member of the human species? For most of us, this aspect of our identity is not front and center. More relevant are things like gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, political party, sports team affiliations, and all of our other groups memberships, large and small. Not only do we stake our identity and often also our sense of self-worth in these groups, but we also tend to be more helpful towards those who belong […]

McFarland S, Webb M & Brown D (2012). All Humanity Is My Ingroup: A Measure and Studies of Identification With All Humanity., Journal of personality and social psychology, PMID: 22708625

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September 24, 2012

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6:33 PM | Science Utopia: Some Thoughts About Ethics and Publication Bias

Science Utopia, next exit Psychology's integrity in the public eye has been rocked by recent high profile discoveries of data fabrication (here, here, and here) and several independent realizations that psychologists (this is not unique to our field) tend to engage in data analytic practices that allow researchers to find positive results (here, here, and here). While it can be argued that these are not really new realizations (here), the net effect has turned psychologists to the […]

Simmons JP, Nelson LD & Simonsohn U (2011). False-positive psychology: undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant., Psychological science, 22 (11) 1359-66. PMID: 22006061

John, L., Loewenstein, G. & Prelec, D. (2012). Measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling., Psychological Science, 23 524-532. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611430953

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September 10, 2012

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1:17 AM | Status Hierarchies: Do We Need Them?

Emile Durkheim (source) I have been studying the topic of social status ever since I started my graduate training. That was in 2004 when George W. Bush was starting his second term as President, Clint Eastwood was busy winning an Oscar for best picture (Million Dollar Baby), and Lindsay Lohan wasn’t a punchline. In all of that time I hadn’t ever considered the question of whether society needs social hierarchies in the first place? That is, do we really need to rank ourselves in […]

Tracy JL & Matsumoto D (2008). The spontaneous expression of pride and shame: evidence for biologically innate nonverbal displays., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105 (33) 11655-60. PMID: 18695237

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August 27, 2012

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1:45 AM | A Game of Thrones: Lessons About Status II

Lord Varys, the eunuch (source) This week is my first week of teaching a new course at the University of Illinois. The course is called "Power, Status, and Influence" and so far I've finished preparing about 80% of the lecture materials. I'm pretty excited about the topic and I think (hope?) the students will be as well. In my last post about the course I mentioned considering the popular George R. R. Martin fantasy novel "A Game of Thrones" (now filming its […]

Mazur A & Booth A (1998). Testosterone and dominance in men., The Behavioral and brain sciences, 21 (3) 353. PMID: 10097017

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August 13, 2012

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2:46 AM | How the Rich are Different from the Poor II: Empathy

In the many conversations that F. Scott Fitzgerald had with his friend Ernest Hemingway, Fitzgerald was believed to have said "The rich are different from the poor." Hemingway's alleged response: "Yes, they have more money." While this conversation may have never occurred, it goes without saying that the rich do indeed differ from the poor. In this second part of a four part PYM series I will be exploring precisely how the rich differ from the poor--in a […]

Kraus, MW, Horberg, EJ, Goetz, J & Keltner, D. (2011). Social class rank, threat vigilance, and hostile reactivity, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, DOI: 10.1177/0146167211410987

Kraus MW, Côté S & Keltner D (2010). Social class, contextualism, and empathic accuracy., Psychological science, 21 (11) 1716-23. PMID: 20974714

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August 09, 2012

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8:36 PM | How to make time stand still

It often feels like there just aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish all the things we want to accomplish, let alone find a moment to relax. The demands of work and social life, combined with our basic needs for sleep, food, and exercise, can quickly add up and overflow, producing the sense that time is constantly slipping away and we're constantly running to catch up. Time may be limited, but it doesn't have to always feel that way. New research suggests that our state […]

Rudd, M., Vohs, K.D., & Aaker, J. (2012). Awe expands people's perception of time, alters decision-making, and enhances well-being., Psychological Science,

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August 06, 2012

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9:20 PM | Behind the Scenes of Psychological Research: What Does the Future Hold?

Since starting this blog, I’ve told you about interesting and hopefully useful research findings. But today I wanted to take a step back and share with you a bit about what is going on behind the scenes of psychological research. We assume that findings we are telling you about—those which are published in peer-reviewed journals—are true, but it turns out that is not always the case. Recently, it has come to light that the way we conduct our studies may be leading us to find […]

Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D. & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant, Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417632

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July 16, 2012

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5:14 AM | How the Rich are Different from the Poor I: Choice

In the many conversations that F. Scott Fitzgerald had with his friend Ernest Hemingway, Fitzgerald was believed to have said that "The rich are different from the poor." Hemingway's alleged response: "Yes, they have more money." While this conversation may have never occurred, it goes without saying that the rich do indeed differ from the poor. In this first part of a four part PYM series I will be exploring precisely how the rich differ from the poor--in a […]

Stephens, N. M., Fryberg, S. A. & Markus, H. R. (2011). When Choice Does Not Equal Freedom: A Sociocultural Analysis of Agency in Working-Class American Contexts, Social Psychological and Personality Science, DOI: 10.1177/1948550610378757

Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R. & Townsend, S. (2007). Choice as an act of meaning: The case of social class, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.814

Kraus MW, Piff PK, Mendoza-Denton R, Rheinschmidt ML & Keltner D (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor., Psychological review, 119 (3) 546-72. PMID: 22775498

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July 02, 2012

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7:01 AM | The Happiness Chronicles III: Does Status Increase Happiness?

"Beggars do not envy millionaires, but of course, they do envy other beggars who are more successful." --Bertram Russell (1930) This is the final part of a three-part series on the science of happiness. In Part I, I discussed some pitfalls to pursuing happiness. In Part II, I suggested that money doesn't buy happiness, unless it is spent on others. In Part III, I discuss new research suggesting that having high status might improve happiness. People (some more than others) can […]

Anderson C, Kraus MW, Galinsky AD & Keltner D (2012). The Local-Ladder Effect: Social Status and Subjective Well-Being., Psychological science, PMID: 22653798

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June 05, 2012

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11:09 PM | The Importance of Being Agreeable

Consider, for a moment, two very different people: Draco Neville Neville is a friendly, warm person who tends to cooperate with and trust others. He generally expects the best of people, and tends to be generous and helpful towards others. He tries to be modest about himself. Draco, on the other hand, is an aloof, rude person who tends to be competitive and suspicious of others. He’s cynical about people – he doesn’t expect them to return favors, so he’s not that […]

de Haan, A., Deković, M. & Prinzie, P. (2012). Longitudinal impact of parental and adolescent personality on parenting., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (1) 189-199. DOI: 10.1037/a0025254

Sutin, A., Ferrucci, L., Zonderman, A. & Terracciano, A. (2011). Personality and obesity across the adult life span., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101 (3) 579-592. DOI: 10.1037/a0024286

Judge, T., Livingston, B. & Hurst, C. (2012). Do nice guys—and gals—really finish last? The joint effects of sex and agreeableness on income., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (2) 390-407. DOI: 10.1037/a0026021

Milfont, T. & Sibley, C. (2012). The big five personality traits and environmental engagement: Associations at the individual and societal level, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32 (2) 187-195. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2011.12.006

Srivastava, S., John, O., Gosling, S. & Potter, J. (2003). Development of personality in early and middle adulthood: Set like plaster or persistent change?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84 (5) 1041-1053. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.5.1041

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