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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (47 results)

  • Article
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UC Davis Previously Published Works (2018)
    Cover page: The preregistration revolution needs to distinguish between predictions and analysesCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Davis Previously Published Works (2014)
    When and why do people's likes and dislikes flexibly tune to the current context, and when do they remain consistent? Ideas about flexibility and consistency have permeated the attitude literature throughout its history. Building on the notion that both flexibility and consistency in evaluative responding can be highly functional as well as highly social, this paper considers the role of distance in guiding people's evaluations to incorporate specific and individualized information that helps immerse them in their current social environment, versus broad and general information that helps them reach beyond their current context and relate to things outside of it. Next, the paper reviews research supporting this perspective, focusing on its implications for understanding how people's evaluations help them tune into different aspects of their social environment - those that tend to be specific to a particular context, and those that tend to be consistently encountered across contexts. The described studies suggest that distance regulates susceptibility to specific and general social influences, as well as the extent to which people's evaluations reflect broad and socially shared morals, values, and ideological principles. © 2014 The Authors. Social and Personality Psychology Compass published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
      Creative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Davis Previously Published Works (2014)
        Creative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
        • Article
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        UC Davis Previously Published Works (2016)
          Cover page: Introduction to the Special Section on Improving Research PracticesCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Davis Previously Published Works (2014)
            Creative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
            • Peer Reviewed
            UC Davis Previously Published Works (2018)
            Recent events have placed psychological science at the forefront of a broad movement across scientific disciplines to improve research methods and practices. Many of the methodological tools emerging from this context have focused on two core aims: (1) maximizing what researchers can learn from each individual study that they conduct, and (2) maximizing what researchers can learn from synthesizing across multiple studies on a given topic. This chapter provides readers with the concrete tools they need to pursue each of these aims in their own research, with a focus on discussing when, why, and how to implement each tool. Readers will learn how to think about and distinguish between exploratory research questions versus confirmatory hypotheses and between exploratory versus confirmatory analyses, how to plan for unexpected results, how to boost statistical power, and the importance of conducting different kinds of replications. Readers will also learn about cutting-edge methods for conducting within-paper meta-analyses and adjusting for publication bias in meta-analysis.
              Cover page: New developments in research methodsCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Davis Previously Published Works (2017)
              Considerable research has demonstrated the power of the current positive or negative frame to shape people's current judgments. But humans must often learn about positive and negative information as they encounter that information sequentially over time. It is therefore crucial to consider the potential importance of sequencing when developing an understanding of how humans think about valenced information. Indeed, recent work looking at sequentially encountered frames suggests that some frames can linger outside the context in which they are first encountered, sticking in the mind so that subsequent frames have a muted effect. The present research builds a comprehensive account of sequential framing effects in both the loss and the gain domains. After seeing information about a potential gain or loss framed in positive terms or negative terms, participants saw the same issue reframed in the opposing way. Across 5 studies and 1566 participants, we find accumulating evidence for the notion that in the gain domain, positive frames are stickier than negative frames for novel but not familiar scenarios, whereas in the loss domain, negative frames are always stickier than positive frames. Integrating regulatory focus theory with the literatures on negativity dominance and positivity offset, we develop a new and comprehensive account of sequential framing effects that emphasizes the adaptive value of positivity and negativity biases in specific contexts. Our findings highlight the fact that research conducted solely in the loss domain risks painting an incomplete and oversimplified picture of human bias and suggest new directions for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record
                Cover page: When Good Is Stickier Than Bad: Understanding Gain/Loss Asymmetries in Sequential Framing EffectsCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
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                UC Davis Previously Published Works (2019)
                A growing literature on reframing effects has identified a robust negativity bias: Under many circumstances, people's attitudes change less when framing switches from negative to positive (vs. positive to negative). Like other basic psychological biases, this one is often assumed to reflect a general human tendency, but there are theoretical reasons to expect boundary conditions on when and for whom it operates. In this article, we zero in on age as one important potential moderator, and test competing predictions from different perspectives. Using a large, highly powered data set that synthesizes across multiple past studies ( N = 2,452; aged 18-81 years), we fit multilevel models to test the moderating impact of age on reframing effects, as well as single-shot framing effects. We found that (consistent with socioemotional selectivity theory), the negativity bias in reframing attenuated as age increased. We discuss implications for the aging literature and for understanding valence biases more broadly.
                  Cover page: Age Attenuates the Negativity Bias in Reframing Effects
                  • Thesis
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC Davis Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2021)

                  From intelligence in romantic partners to empathy in political leaders, people can readily think about what they like in other people. These abstract ideas about liking can be useful in many situations, but do they always align with people’s concrete experiences of liking? In this dissertation, I distinguish between ideas and experiences in interpersonal evaluation, and I argue that this distinction is useful because they can predict different kinds of decisions and help explain social psychological phenomena that appear paradoxical. In Chapter 1, I situate ideas versus experiences in a broader theoretical framework on attributes, and I conducted a series of studies showing that (1) ideas about liking for personal attributes can be affected by incidental features of the context, and that (2) ideas about liking versus experiences of liking predict different outcomes in the context of romantic attraction. In Chapter 2, I zero in on empathy and consider why people like the idea of empathy but not always those who show it. Across seven experiments, I found evidence that empathy has evaluative consequences for the empathizer beyond the empathic dyad. Findings from these experiments suggest that although people are often encouraged to empathize with disliked others, they are not always favored for doing so. In Chapter 3, I present a discussion and tutorial on a statistical technique central to my empirical work on ideas versus experiences, structural equation modeling (SEM). Specifically, I conducted a simulation study showing key factors that influence statistical power to detect true effects in SEM, and I introduce a free online app that helps researchers conduct power analysis for SEM. Taken together, these three chapters offer theoretical, empirical, and methodological advances for the study of ideas versus experiences in interpersonal evaluations. Unpacking the distinct roles that ideas versus experiences play can help us understand the apparent disconnect between what people think they like and what drives their liking across many domains.

                    Cover page: Distinguishing Between Ideas and Experiences in Interpersonal Evaluation
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UC Davis Previously Published Works (2014)
                    Integrating research on social exclusion with the broader literature on system justification and flexible responses to threats, we propose a novel coping strategy that individuals may use in the face of social exclusion. In particular, we suggest that because exclusion often feels unexpected, it will lead individuals to bolster the system-justifying worldview that people get what they deserve, as excluded individuals attempt to cognitively cope with the threatened order and predictability of their world. Supporting our prediction, in Study 1, social exclusion (vs. inclusion) led participants to increasingly endorse descriptive meritocratic beliefs suggesting that hard work leads to success in society. This effect was mediated by the perceived unexpectedness of the interaction outcome, providing key evidence for our hypothesized process. Study 2 used individual differences in rejection sensitivity to provide further support for our unexpectedness account, demonstrating that exclusion heightens meritocratic beliefs only insofar as participants tend to find exclusions unexpected. The results expand our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms by which people cope with social exclusion and highlight the malleability of system-justifying ideologies in response to interpersonal factors. © 2013, SAGE Publications. All rights reserved.
                      Cover page: Bolstering system-justifying beliefs in response to social exclusionCreative Commons 'BY-NC-ND' version 4.0 license
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