What Counts as an “Environmental” Issue?

There is a stereotype among both Whites and non-Whites that racial and ethnic minorities care less about the environment than Whites. However, this is a false belief that has been disproved by many studies. Research shows this misperception persists, even though people of color actually report greater environmental concern than Whites when asked in surveys.

We wanted to better understand why this is happening and explore what might correct these misperceptions. Changing these beliefs, we thought, could motivate behavior change, such as increasing engagement in environmental movements. Together with our colleagues and community partners in San Antonio, Texas—a city which has a sizable presence of Hispanics and Latina/os—we tackled these questions.

Finding Out What Matters To People

What followed was an admittedly unexpected discovery that led us to reconsider our own assumptions as researchers. When we asked our participants about the most important environmental issues facing Latinx communities in San Antonio, they elaborated on issues that went beyond what researchers typically consider to be “environmental issues.” Issues like air pollution or lack of green spaces were identified as inextricably linked to broader “social issues” such as racism, economic inequality, and public health (for example, obesity). Participants spontaneously discussed the connections between inequities in education, employment, and health care and leading environmental issues.

This made us reflect on how our own field thinks about “environmental issues.” Earlier research shows that minoritized people such as people of color are more sensitive to their disproportionate exposure to environmental risks (such as pollution) and the social conditions that exacerbate these risks (such as racism). We started thinking whether asking about the “environment” in surveys would elicit fundamentally different meanings depending on one’s social group.

This led us to conduct a larger study online with about 1,200 U.S. adults from diverse backgrounds in terms of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. We listed 18 different issues and asked people how much they agreed each was an environmental issue. Listed issues included not only those that are conventionally regarded as environmental (examples: pollution, climate change, access to public parks), but also those that apparently pertain to the other issue domains such as health or society. These included diabetes, racism, and access to grocery stores. In line with what we learned earlier, both Black and Hispanics/Latinx Americans were more likely to perceive poverty, unemployment, diabetes, and racism as environmental issues than did White Americans. Furthermore, people from less wealthy communities were more likely to endorse this broader conceptualization of environmental issues.

Rethinking What The “Environment” Is

The word “environment” is often associated with images of scenic nature and recreational activities. However, our findings suggest that for marginalized groups such as people of color, the “environment” is a far closer to home, associated with basic livelihood, health, and fair treatment in the society. To be relevant, productive, and inclusive, efforts engaging diverse groups about the ‘environment’ need to carefully consider what the ‘environment’ means to the specific audience first.


For Further Reading

Lewis, N. A., Bravo, M., Naiman, S., Pearson, A. R., Romero-Canyas, R., Schuldt, J. P., & Song, H. (2020). Using qualitative approaches to improve quantitative inferences in environmental psychology. MethodsX, 7, 100943. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2020.100943

Pearson, A. R., Schuldt, J. P., Romero-Canyas, R., Ballew, M. T., & Larson-Konar, D. (2018). Diverse segments of the US public underestimate the environmental concerns of minority and low-income Americans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(49), 12429. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1804698115

Song, H., Lewis, N. A., Ballew, M. T., Bravo, M., Davydova, J., Gao, H. O., Garcia, R. J., Hiltner, S., Naiman, S. M., Pearson, A. R., Romero-Canyas, R., & Schuldt, J. P. (2020). What counts as an “environmental” issue? Differences in issue conceptualization by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 68, 101404. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101404


Hwanseok Song is an assistant professor at Purdue University. His research focuses on how people make and use social judgments in contexts where people communicate information about science, safety, environmental issues, and technological risks.

Neil A. Lewis, Jr. is an assistant professor at Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medicine. His research examines how people's social contexts and identities influence motivation and goal pursuit. 

 

The Allure of Perfection

Imagine that you hear about a high school student who recently took the American College Test (ACT), used by many colleges for admissions decisions. Suppose she scored a 34 out of 36. This is a very good score, and so it would be natural for you to use this information (perhaps even without realizing you are doing so) to form a positive impression of the student’s intellectual ability or test competence. But what if you also learn about two other students who respectively scored a 35 and a perfect 36 on the same test? In the absence of other information about the students, it seems logical that you might evaluate the student who scored a 35 to be slightly more capable than the student whose score was 34 but slightly less so than the student whose score was 36.

The Perfection Premium

However, our new research reveals a different pattern of results. In the ACT scenario, the difference in perceived ability between a student who earns a perfect score of 36 and a near-perfect score of 35 is much greater than the difference between students whose scores are 35 versus 34. Given that the difference between both sets of scores is identical (1 point), this asymmetry is quite interesting. This “perfection premium” is not limited to ability ratings but applies broadly across social perception and product decision-making contexts. One of our studies shows that even when choosing between pairs of socks, consumers’ general preference for the option with higher wool content is amplified when the superior option contains 100% Merino wool! It appears that people place a premium on perfection that results in inflated evaluations of individuals or products that are perfect on a numerical attribute.

Of course, there are some cases where it makes perfect sense (no pun intended) for people to exhibit a perfection premium. For instance, people might not perceive much of a difference between a bottle of spring water that is 98% pure (with 2% contaminants) and a bottle that is 99% pure (with 1% contaminants). Yet, it may be entirely rational for consumers to disproportionately value a bottle of spring water that is 100% pure (with 0% contaminants). Because the 100% pure water ensures zero chance of physical contamination, this perfection premium may be justified. Importantly, however, a contamination explanation cannot account for the perfection premium that we also observe in social perception judgments (such as intelligence ratings of individuals).

The Role of Categorization

So, if it’s not always due to physical contamination concerns, why do people exhibit the perfection premium? Our research indicates that the perfection premium arises at least in part because of a categorization process.

People form categories to simplify and organize their life. We are predisposed to sort individuals into social groups based on beliefs, values, and traits to facilitate thinking and to speed up decision-making. Even when comparing and contrasting objects, consumers tend to rely on categorization as a time-saving rule of thumb. Rather than strictly relying on numerical magnitudes, people even put numbers into different categories—for instance, numbers can be classified as odd or even, and round numbers such as those ending in zero are categorized and evaluated differently than other numbers. Simply put, categorization is a fundamental, ingrained, and often automatic part of how humans think.

We hypothesized that people might sort or categorize an item or a person based on the level of perfection of its numerical attribute. Perfection is the state of being flawless or free from defect. Because perfection is unsurprisingly desired by many, we thought it might be a natural basis for categorization. That’s exactly what we found—people seem to classify both individuals and items (such as consumer goods) based on whether or not they are perfect (versus near-perfect) on a numerical scale. For example, one of our studies shows that people are much more likely to put two test takers into the same group if they both received near-perfect test scores (e.g., 86 versus 87 out of 88) than if one of the test takers earned a perfect score (e.g., 87 versus 88 out of 88). Furthermore, our results are consistent with prior research showing that categorization exaggerates the distance in evaluations between members of different groups.

Our hope is that by becoming aware of the generalized human tendency to overvalue “perfect” scores, ratings, and other numerical values, people may be better able to resist the allure of perfection when making social judgments and consumer decisions. After all, in many cases, the real difference between a perfect score and a near-perfect score may be negligible.


For Further Reading

Isaac, M. S., & Spangenberg, K. (2021). “The perfection premium.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12(6), 930–937. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620944313.

Isaac, M. S., & Schindler, R. M. (2014). The top-ten effect: Consumers’ subjective categorization of ranked lists.” Journal of Consumer Research, 40(6), 1181-1202. https://doi.org/10.1086/674546.

Li, M., & Chapman, G. B. (2009). ‘100% of anything looks good’: The appeal of one hundred percent.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16(1), 156-162. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.1.156
 

Mathew S. Isaac is a Professor at the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University. His research examines consumer judgment and decision-making, particularly how contextual and motivational factors influence product evaluations and purchase intentions. He writes a blog for Psychology Today on the psychology of numbers, categories, and lists.

Katie Spangenberg is a Lecturer at the Albers School of Business and Economics at Seattle University. She holds a PhD in Marketing from the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

 

Group Favors Can Lower Gratitude

Receiving a gift meant just for us often makes us feel grateful. Maybe our best friend finds us a signed copy of our favorite book, or our spouse cooks us a special dinner. We feel grateful for positive, valued things that come from others.

But often, we receive things of value that are meant not just for us, but for many people. Perhaps a large anonymous donation enables our city to open a new library, or the company we work for treats all the employees to a lavish holiday dinner. We can feel grateful for our freedoms, our blessings, even our very existence—gifts that are not unique but given to many others. My research looks at whether we feel just as grateful for things given to us as a part of a group.

One possibility is that we feel more grateful for gifts that are given to many others. After all, a dinner made for 100 people is a bigger gift than the same dinner made only for me.

But it’s also possible that we feel less grateful for these group gifts. If someone buys us our favorite book, it shows they were thinking of us, which would make us feel special and grateful. Instead, if someone gave us a free book that they were handing out to many people, we might feel less special, and also less grateful, even for the same book.

In my first study, participants read stories about receiving either a personal favor or a group favor. For example, they were asked to imagine that their professor postponed just their exam, or they imagined that they postponed the exam for the entire class. Participants ended up feeling more grateful for the personal favor, compared to the group favor. People rated the favor as larger and less selfish when the favor was done only for them, compared to when it was given to the entire group.

A follow up study that told people either that the professor was being selfish (postponing the person’s exam in order to get better evaluations) or unselfish (postponing the person’s exam because they were sympathetic) suggested that people were more grateful for a personal favor if they thought it was unselfish. Given that there was no difference between personal and group favors in this study, that indicates that perhaps the intentionality behind the favor—“I’m doing this for me” versus “I’m doing this for you”—could be a driving factor.

These findings might not be the same everywhere, however. Culture might make a difference. The participants in my studies were all American college students. People from collectivist cultures, who value their groups more highly, might react more positively to group favors. Even in individualistic cultures like the U.S., there may be some times when we value group favors. I’m running some new studies looking at whether people might be more grateful when the group being helped is important to them, like their family or a close friend group.

But if you happen to be in charge of a classroom, it might be smart to keep these studies in mind. Helping out the entire class might lead to less gratitude than you would think.


For Further Reading

Li, Y., Luo, L., & Fu, J. (2019). Benefactor intention, perceived helpfulness, and personal responsibility influence gratitude and indebtedness. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 47, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.7481

Tsang, J., (2021). (Un)special favors: Gratitude for group-based benefits. The Journal of Positive Psychology. 16 (1), 27-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1716051

Tsang, J., & Martin, S. R. (2017). Four experiments on the relational function of gratitude. The Journal of Positive Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2017.1388435
 

Jo-Ann Tsang is Associate Professor of Psychology at Baylor University. Her research interests include gratitude, forgiveness, psychology of religion, and prejudice.

 

Why Longstanding Rituals Block Diversity and Inclusion Goals

On August 20, 2020, the football team Kansas City Chiefs announced the prohibition of Native American-style face paint and ceremonial headdresses at their home stadium.

Although the decision was made with the intention to better respect and celebrate American Indian cultures, especially in the wake of a nationwide push for racial justice following the death of George Floyd, many fans on Twitter responded with outrage over this decision—even threatening to leave the Chiefs’ fan base altogether.

Why did this decision produce such a strong, negative emotional reaction in some fans? Behavioral science research suggests why some people may react negatively to the ban on face paint and headdresses, including political polarization, backlash toward diversity initiatives, and the desire for freedom and control. With my colleagues Juliana Schroeder, Nicholas M. Hobson, Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton, I looked at yet another explanation.  

The Role of Moral Outrage

In our research, we found that alterations to group rituals—such as prohibiting face paint and headdresses at Chiefs games—can provoke moral outrage because altering rituals is perceived as an attack on sacred group values.

Wearing face paint and headdresses at Chiefs games qualifies as a ritual because they are part of a rigid and meaningful sequence that includes the tomahawk chop. The tomahawk chop looks like, as you might guess, someone chopping with a tomahawk—and fans further combine it with chanting the Chiefs’ distinctive cheer and (at least before August 20, 2020) wearing face paint and headdresses. Rituals are actions that are done in a specified way—such as always performing the tomahawk chop when the Chiefs run onto the field—and they have meaning to the individuals who perform them—such as symbolizing the Chiefs’ ability to dominate the opposing team.

We found that the more an action constitutes a ritual—that is, the more the action is done in a rigid and repetitive way and has meaning—the more alterations to the action provoke outrage. To illustrate, one of our studies asked U.S. citizens to consider alterations to 15 different holidays celebrated in the U.S. The holidays naturally varied in ritualism—ranging from low-ritualistic holidays such as Columbus Day to high-ritualistic holidays such as Thanksgiving. We used a survey methodology to assess the degree that each holiday constituted a ritual by our definition and the amount of moral outrage triggered over a hypothetical alteration to the date the holiday is celebrated.

Which Holiday Alterations Triggered the Most Outrage?

Proposed alterations to more ritualistic holidays such as New Year’s, Christmas, and Thanksgiving produced more moral outrage than alterations to less ritualistic holidays such as Columbus Day or Washington’s birthday. The figure below presents these results.

Figure described above

Does the Ritual’s Alteration Have to be Intentional?

Even though rituals represent sacred values that are held to be non-negotiable, we wondered if the nature of the violator’s intention might soften the condemnation.

To find out, we recruited another sample of U.S. citizens to imagine that a fellow citizen recited the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance by sitting down (instead of standing up)—thus, altering the procedure to the ritual. Participants learned different reasons for the alteration:

  • Harmful intent—the individual aimed to undermine the country’s value system
  • Beneficial intent—the individual aimed to be inclusive to Americans with disabilities who cannot stand
  • Accidental intent—the individual forgot to stand
  • Lack of ability intent—the individual could not stand due to a medical condition, or
  • No information relating to intent

Then we asked whether participants felt any moral outrage—and if so, how much.

For all reasons for sitting except for being physically unable to stand, there was more moral outrage directed at the individual who stayed seated compared to the individual who stood. Thus, even alterations to rituals that are beneficial or undertaken accidentally can invoke outrage in others.

Rituals and Social Change

Overall, our research demonstrates that altering longstanding rituals provokes moral outrage among those who practice them. This has implications for the urgent and necessary efforts to foster diverse and inclusive societies and organizations. There are many rituals and traditions that serve as a roadblock to progress on diversity and inclusion goals, in domains as diverse as collegiate Greek Life to holiday celebrations. Our results suggest that altering these longstanding rituals—even with a stated beneficial intention—can provoke outrage in others, in part because the ritual is viewed as intertwined with the group’s most important values.


For Further Reading

Stein, D. H., Schroeder, J., Hobson, N. M., Gino, F., & Norton, M. I. (2021). When alterations are violations: Moral outrage and punishment in response to (even minor) alterations to rituals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000352

Stein, D. H., Hobson, N. M., & Schroeder, J. (2021). A sacred commitment: How rituals promote group survival. Current Opinion in Psychology, 40, 114-120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.09.005

Hobson, N. M., Schroeder, J., Risen, J. L., Xygalatas, D., & Inzlicht, M. (2018). The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22(3), 260-284. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868317734944


Daniel Stein is a doctoral student in the Management of Organizations (MORS) Group at UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business. He conducts research on groups and teams in organizations, focusing on commitment to one's group. He can be reached at [email protected].

 

What Happened to People’s Values During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

The COVID-19 pandemic changed most people’s day-to-day life. It seems like all our behaviors underwent a change, but what about the core aspects of who we are as individuals? Did our values change, too? Values are life goals, defining what we want to achieve, such as being kind to others, having independence, success, or the safety of one’s nation or loved ones. People usually know their values and stick with them over time. But what happened in the current crisis?

We repeatedly contacted over 1,000 Australians ranging from 18 to 75 years old. We asked them how important different values are in their life. Three of these times were before the pandemic, in 2017, 2018, and 2019. We contacted them again as the pandemic started, and then 8-9 months later. At these last two time points, we also asked how worried they were about getting the virus.

Values: The Goals That Guide Life Choices

Values direct thinking and behavior, even when a person does not directly think about them. We decide what to do, based on the priorities we place on different values. Past research found that people make daily decisions (e.g., where should I vacation?), as well as important life-changing decisions (e.g., should I immigrate? What to vote?), partly as a result of personal values.

We relied on the work of psychologist Shalom Schwartz, who grouped values into four categories:

  • Conservation values promote the preservation of the past, order, and resistance to change.
  • Openness to change values promotes an independent, creative, and explorative mind, and seeking change.
  • Self-transcendence values emphasize care for the welfare of others and nature.
  • Self-enhancement values emphasize the pursuit of one’s self-interest through ambition, success, and dominance.

People’s values were stable before the pandemic. Once the pandemic hit, values did change for all except self-enhancement, and here’s how.

Self-Transcendence Values

The values of caring for people and for nature remained stable at first. Later, by late 2020, they became significantly less important. This decrease occurred especially among people worried about their health. Maybe people focused on their own survival, and had no capacity left to worry about the environment, society, and even close others. Maybe also, social distancing created physical distance from others, which resulted in emotional distance—as said—“far from sight, far from heart.”

Conservation Values

The values of keeping safe and stable became more important at the beginning of the pandemic. Our respondents, and especially those who worried about their health, immediately started prioritizing safety and security, and traditions around one's family, culture, and religion. This new-found focus on conservatism may have helped to enhance compliance with instructions by the authority.

As the pandemic progressed, conservation values did not return to previous levels. This may be surprising, given that Australia had only a minor spread of the pandemic. This means the value changes may have long-term effects, even after the pandemic has passed. Possibly, social distancing itself maintained these value changes.

Openness to Change Values

Values like seeking adventure and enjoyment became less important early in the pandemic, most likely reflecting the necessary adjustments to a situation in which much variety and enjoyment were out of reach. But, a few months later, while people continued to downplay values that promote pleasure and enjoyment, values that prioritize independence and intellectual pursuits increased in importance. Existing routines that were now out of reach seem to have been replaced with more intellectual stimulation and activities. Maybe people started to apply critical thinking to more aspects of life.

COVID and Life Goals

Our study shows that during the COVID pandemic there were changes to much more than people’s daily routines. Basic goals and aspirations in life changed. These changes were quick, but lingered over time. These results may have substantial effects on the future of individuals and society. As we struggle to fight climate change, hunger, and poverty, the focus of individuals on personal, rather than social goals, may prove harmful over time. We are curious to know about values changes in countries that were hit harder by the pandemic than Australia, and especially what happens over even longer periods of time.


For Further Reading

Daniel, E., Bardi, A., Fischer, R., Benish-Weisman, M., & Lee, J. A. (2021). Changes in personal values in pandemic times. Social Psychological and Personality Science. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211024026

Lee, J. A., Bardi, A., Daniel, E., Benish-Weisman, M., & Fischer, R. (2021). Our research shows COVID has made Australians more conservative and care less about others. The Conversation.  https://theconversation.com/our-research-shows-covid-has-made-australians-more-conservative-and-care-less-about-others-161500
 

Ella Daniel is a senior lecturer (associate professor) at the Department of School Counseling and Special Education, Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on value development across the life span, and specifically among children and adolescents, and development of prosocial behavior.

Anat Bardi is a professor of social/personality psychology at Royal Holloway University of London. She studies human values and particularly value change, the nature of values, and effects of values on behavior.

Ronald Fischer is a professor of psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and a fellow of the Royal Society, New Zealand. His work focuses on cultural and evolutionary dynamics, with a special interest in cultural differences in values, behavior, prosociality, and well-being as well as larger cultural dynamics within and across human societies.

Maya Benish-Weisman is an associate professor at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her academic research focuses on how values affect prosocial behavior and aggression, and the psychological impact of immigration and ethnic identity, and she is interested in ways to enhance adaptive development among adolescents.

Julie A. Lee is a professor and director of the Centre for Human and Cultural Values at the University of Western Australia. Her research focuses on values theory, measurement, and application in consumer behavior and tourism contexts.

Surviving Your Loss by Looking to Your Past


For so many individuals and families across the globe who have lost loved ones to the COVID-19 pandemic, this has been a time steeped in tragedy and pain. During this time, many of us have lost loved ones due to other tragedies, as well. Our family suffered the loss of Stephen’s mother to cancer.

We know too well that nothing can replace the presence of loved ones in our lives or entirely relieve the pain of their loss. Nevertheless, we personally find some comfort in reflecting on the life of Stephen’s mother, our memories with her, and the positive impact she had on us. Research we conducted along with our collaborators, published just months before our loss, suggests that those of us who engage in this sort of nostalgic reverie may benefit from reductions in some of the negative symptoms that tend to accompany our loss and grief.

Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for treasured moments in our pasts, and the moments for which we are nostalgic tend to be ones that involve ourselves in relation to our close others, particularly at momentous occasions. We might reflect back on our wedding days, holiday gatherings with our families, great vacations—whatever moments are valuable to us personally.

Nostalgia is a Good Thing

Historically, scholars incorrectly viewed nostalgia as a disorder that would harm our health and well-being. Engaging in nostalgic reverie would make us feel sad and lonely and cause alarming physical symptoms, they thought.

However, historical scholars actually had it backwards: rather than nostalgia bringing about sadness and loneliness, uncomfortable states (like sadness and loneliness) tend to bring about nostalgia. Feeling lonely might lead us to reminisce about some of the treasured moments we shared with our loved ones, and reflecting on those moments then helps us feel less lonely. In this way, nostalgia serves a restorative function and can be quite healthy. In fact, people who experience nostalgia more frequently tend to experience psychological benefits including feeling more accepted, supported, inspired, and optimistic. They also tend to experience more positive emotion and feel that their lives are more meaningful.

Can nostalgia benefit a person even when facing the loss of a loved one to death? In our research, undergraduate students who had lost a loved one within the past two years reported their frequency and personal value of nostalgic engagement as well as their level of distress including intrusive thoughts, irritability and physical symptoms across a one-month period.

Nostalgia helped by reducing distress across time without encouraging what are called “escapist strategies” (like trying to avoid reminders of their loss). More nostalgic people reported fewer intrusive thoughts over time, but less nostalgic people did not experience a similar benefit.

We also examined irritability and physical reactions to the loss, such as trouble sleeping and a pounding heart, and found that these, too, declined over time among more nostalgic people who were suffering from more intense grief. People who were suffering from more intense grief who were less nostalgic did not experience a similar benefit. In fact, their symptoms worsened over time.

Nostalgia offers a more positive and constructive way of connecting with our pasts. Rather than ruminating on negative emotions and experiences, we may reflect on treasured, even triumphant moments, moments of love and joy.

We simply asked about nostalgia among our participants, but a great deal of research shows that a variety of methods—such as scents, narratives, and music—can induce nostalgia as well. For us, Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” will always remind us of Stephen dancing with his mother at our wedding. Paying attention to the present and looking toward the future are important, but it is also healthy to bring out those photo albums or play those records once in a while.


For Further Reading:

Reid, C. A., Green, J. D., Short, S. D., Willis, K. D., Moloney, J. M., Collison, E. A., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., & Gramling, S. (2020). The past as a resource for the bereaved: Nostalgia predicts declines in distress. Cognition and Emotion, 35(2), 256-268. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2020.1825339

Sedikides, C., Wildschut, T., Routledge, C., Arndt, J., Hepper, E. G., & Zhou, X. (2015). To nostalgize: Mixing memory with affect and desire. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 189-273. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2014.10.001

Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J., & Routledge, C. (2006). Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 91(5), 975-993. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.5.975
 

Chelsea Reid is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the College of Charleston. She studies the self and interpersonal relationships, with focuses on nostalgia and attitude agreements between partners.

Stephen Short is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the College of Charleston with expertise in advanced statistical techniques and research interests in predictors of attitudes toward science.

 

A Smile by Any Other Name Wouldn’t Look as Sweet


You catch a smile from someone, and it somehow conveys more than just simple charm. It’s warm, it’s inviting. It feels genuine, as though it’s conveying true happiness. This smile does not feel like every other smile because, well, it is not every other smile! Not every smile is created equal, but what then, makes these smiles so special?

The smile described above is likely a “Duchenne smile.” Named after 19th-century French anatomist G.B. Duchenne, these smiles use distinctive facial muscles. We often think of smiles as the upturning of one’s lips, but a Duchenne smile is that, and much more. A Duchenne smile also involves a pulling up of the cheeks, a squinting of the eyes, and perhaps, the appearance of crow’s feet.

Now, as many of us can attest to, a “regular” smile can be deliberately used to convey different emotions such as a pleasantry or underlying slyness. It offers us utility and diversity in expression, and in that way, it is important to have it easily on hand. This also makes the emotional content of “regular” smiles particularly hard to identify. This was especially salient before COVID-19 vaccines were widely available, as a majority of us had our mouths covered in public, effectively relegating the “regular” smile to undetectable. 

The same cannot be said of a Duchenne smile. While Duchenne smiles can be done on purpose by many people, their interpretation is less diverse. Duchenne smiles are more likely to convey a singular message: “I’m happy” or at least are often perceived as more genuine and happier than regular smiles. They are interpreted as a more honest message about emotions, where a regular smile might not be. That is part of what makes these smiles so appealing, but perhaps there’s more to it than just that.

Frequent Duchenne smiling may also be a sign chronic positive mood. While one Duchenne smile may indicate a happy moment in one’s life, a collection of Duchenne smiles over a period may indicate a general happy feeling over that period. Chronic positive mood confers benefits in social and health domains, and as such can serve as a sign of one’s psychological fitness. 

My collaborators and I ran a preliminary test of this idea in a recent study. In this study, participants self-reported their well-being and submitted photos of themselves. Photos were then standardized to show only participants’ faces, yielding 162 faces with varying smiling intensity and associated self-reports of felt well-being.

Research assistants then rated each of these photos for “overall happiness,” “genuineness of the smile,” “smiling in the mouth,” and “smiling in the eyes.” Genuineness of the smiles, intensity of the smile in the mouth area, and intensity of the smile in the eyes area were all associated with participants’ self-reported positive moods. The more positive participants’ moods, the more research assistants perceived the smiles in their pictures as genuine and intense in the mouth and eyes. This finding supports the idea that perceptions of smiles may be a reliable indicator of underlying felt moods, specifically happiness and chronic positive mood.          

Happiness in the Moment versus a Life that Makes Happiness

When discussing “happiness,” a clear distinction must be made. Happiness is an emotional state that can be transitory, but a person may also live a life that is generally happy. This is something the ancient Greeks talked about. They talked about living life to the “highest human good” and achieving virtue through action, which in turn will produce happiness. Thus, the momentary state of happiness is not the same as a way of living.

How does this fit with our understanding of Duchenne smiling? Perhaps, the Duchenne smile serves multiple purposes. For one, frequent Duchenne smiles may be interpreted as a sign of the person’s chronic positive mood. Secondly, given that chronic positive mood is in part predicted by living a virtuous, and rewarding life, Duchenne smiles may be an indicator of underlying life patterns. In other words, “living good” leads to “feeling good.” A person who lives such a life is more likely to engage in activities that bring them happiness, and thus might exhibit a happier demeanor and perhaps a greater number of Duchenne smiles. 

Therefore, a happy demeanor and Duchenne smiles might serve as a sign of a good person, and thus a person whom we would want to affiliate and cooperate with. Thus, Duchenne smiles may have served and perhaps continue to serve an evolutionary purpose. Duchenne smiles could be a nonverbal sign that cooperating with this person could be rather fruitful given that they lead a “good” life.

Back to the question that we started with: What is in a smile? It turns out much more than you may have considered. A Duchenne smile is likely to convey real feelings of joy, it perhaps means that this person often feels positive moods and is someone you want to work with. So, the next time you see a smile that warms your heart, you know that it may be for good reason.


For Further Reading

Sheldon, K. M., Corcoran, M., & Sheldon, M. (2021). Duchenne smiles as honest signals of chronic positive mood. Perspectives on Psychological Science, doi.org/10.1177/1745691620959831
 

Mike Corcoran is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Cabrini University. He studies well-being, goals, and motivation. 

Where Do Impostor Feelings Come From?

More than 40 years ago, two psychologists coined the term impostor phenomenon. They used the term to describe the many bright, highly accomplished women they had encountered in their clinical practice, who, surprisingly, had trouble believing that they had really earned their success. These women regarded their academic or professional success as unearned and doubted their abilities; they thought they had gotten to where they were by some fluke or stroke of good luck; and they worried that others would discover their supposed incompetence.

In the years following, interest in the impostor phenomenon—also called impostor syndrome—swelled among laypeople and psychologists. Today, blog pieces about the impostor phenomenon are published everywhere, focusing on, for example, how one can cope with impostor feelings, or which celebrities have experienced these feelings and why. A particularly timely article offers advice on how to “beat” the impostor syndrome during remote work.

Consistent with early observations from clinical settings, researchers who study the impostor phenomenon today find that it is experienced more commonly and intensely by women than men. And, individuals just starting out in their professional life seem to be particularly vulnerable to impostor feelings as well. Our question was, why are these groups more likely to experience the impostor phenomenon?

Rather than looking to the person for an explanation, we took a different tack in an attempt to understand these group differences. We investigated how the professional contexts people find themselves in might amplify these well-established gender and career stage differences in impostor feelings.

We looked particularly at people’s perceptions of what their career values for success. We thought that careers that prize brilliance—that is, untutored intellectual ability—would represent a threatening environment for women—not because they aren’t brilliant, but because ambient cultural stereotypes associate brilliance with men, not women. Women may be aware that their career emphasizes something they are stereotyped to lack, which could in turn prompt doubt about their abilities. Similarly, brilliance-oriented careers may be threatening for junior individuals as well, who may feel more unsure about their competence and capabilities on the job.

Four Thousand Academics Speak Up

We focused our investigation on academia because we thought concerns about intellectual ability would be especially pronounced in this community. We asked over 4,000 graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and professors across a range of fields to report their impostor feelings, by asking them to rate their agreement with statements such as, “Sometimes I’m afraid others will discover how much knowledge or ability I really lack” (borrowed from Clance and Imes’s prior work on this topic). Academics also told us the extent to which they believed that their field values brilliance for success by rating their agreement with statements like “Being a top scholar of [my discipline] requires a special aptitude that just can’t be taught.”

Guess Who Felt the Most Like an Imposter?

We are sure you guessed right: Women and early career academics (that is, graduate students and postdocs) reported stronger impostor feelings than men, and faculty members, respectively. Even more important, the magnitude of these differences depended on academics’ perceptions of their field. We found that gender differences in impostor feelings were exacerbated in fields that emphasized brilliance. Women, but not men, who perceived their field to value brilliance for success reported heightened impostor feelings. Interestingly, underrepresented minority (URM) women (that is, women who self-identified as Black or African American, Hispanic or Latina, American Indian or Alaska Native) reported the strongest impostor feelings in fields perceived to value brilliance, relative to URM men, and White and Asian women and men. This aligns with prior speculations that have pointed out the unique (and intensified) impostor experiences of women of color.

Similarly, differences in impostor feelings between early-career academics and faculty were magnified in fields viewed as brilliance-oriented. Not only did faculty report lower levels of impostor feelings overall, but their impostor feelings did not increase as the perceived brilliance orientation of their field increased—as it did for early-career academics.

It’s Not Just an Individual Person’s Problem

We think there are two important takeaways from these findings:

  • First, the impostor phenomenon isn’t just a problem for particularly neurotic or insecure individuals. Well-intentioned recommendations for how individuals can reduce their impostor feelings might be productively steered toward discussions of how fields and workplace environments can create atmospheres where everyone feels capable of succeeding.
  • Second, as many have emphasized before, race is gendered, and gender is racialized. People navigate every situation embodying multiple identities. In our research, this idea was reflected in the fact that URM women experienced the strongest impostor feelings in brilliance-focused fields. Without attention to these intersections in our study, we might have missed important distinctions in how URM versus non-URM women experience impostor feelings in brilliance-oriented fields.

For Further Reading

Muradoglu, M., Horne, Z., Hammond, M., Leslie, S. J., & Cimpian, A. (2020). Women—particularly underrepresented minority women—and early-career academics feel like impostors in fields that value brilliance. Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000669

Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice,15(3), 241-247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006

Feenstra, S., Begeny, C. T., Ryan, M. K., Rink, F. A., Stoker, J. I., & Jordan, J. (2020). Contextualizing the Impostor “Syndrome”. Frontiers in Psychology11, 3206.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575024

Leslie, S. J., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347(6219), 262–265. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1261375
 

Melis Muradoglu is a doctoral candidate at New York University who studies how children and adults think about success.

Andrei Cimpian is a Professor at New York University who studies (social) cognition and its development.

The ‘Maybe’ Favor

Imagine that the elderly gentleman living next door asks you to run some errands for him later—but only if his daughter won’t be able to make it in the afternoon. So you are asked for a “maybe” favor—one that maybe never has to be fulfilled. Probably then, more people would be willing to grant such a favor than if they would certainly have to make good on their promise. But at the same time, if some people never get the chance to keep their promises, some good deeds will be left undone and there will be less courtesy overall.

Or will it? Maybe, we can get actually more good deeds done even though some of them might not be done after all…

To test this idea, we conducted experiments where our participants could donate their participation money to a charitable organization instead of keeping it for themselves. Half were simply given some information about the organization and then had the choice to make the donation or not. On average, 58% of these participants chose to make the donation.

Introducing the ‘Maybe’ Favor

For the other half of our participants, we added a tiny clause to our donation proposal that had a similar effect as the “maybe” from the introductory example: we told them that we will randomly select 5% of those willing to donate to have their donation canceled so they would keep all their participation money. When learning of this “maybe” implied by the 5% chance to have their donation canceled, now 66% chose to make the donation. That means that by deliberately sacrificing 5% of the donations we could have received, the number of people who were willing to make a donation increased by 13%! So despite giving up on some donations, more people donated in the end. Indeed, we could get more good deeds done by leaving some undone.

Here’s Why This Works

The “maybe favor” works because humans are not very good in evaluating uncertain consequences of their actions. Even very exact information about the degree of uncertainty (for example, the “5%” in the experiment just described) is not reacted to in correct proportion. Instead, small probabilities appear larger and large probabilities appear smaller than they actually are. So the 5% chance of not actually having to give your money to charity “feels” more like a 10% or even 20% chance. But whereas the costs that come with a good deed are often very real (time or money has to be spent), the benefits for the decision maker are more elusive and often boil down to just a “warm glow.” Furthermore, our findings suggest that granting the favor already generates the reward even if the favor never actually has to be delivered. After all, external forces prevented your good deed, so you can still claim that your intentions were good!

Other research showed that inaccurate perceptions of probability are particularly pronounced when the consequences have strong emotions attached to them. But in case of the donations, the outcome consists of both benefits and costs. For the more abstract benefits of doing a good deed for someone else, the probability seems to be evaluated rather accurately but for the very tangible costs, such as sacrificing your own money, the probability to actually incur these costs thus seems lower than it really is. In sum, the “maybe favor” then feels more attractive than a cold and analytic look on the probabilities would have warranted.

Our “maybe favor” does not coerce people to do more good but gently “nudges” them by exploiting how humans think about risk. Its applications are not limited to monetary donations but might also be used to increase volunteer work or social commitment. All one needs to get more good deeds done is a simple “maybe.”


For Further Reading

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-292. https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185

Rottenstreich, Y., & Hsee, C. K. (2001). Money, kisses, and electric shocks: On the affective psychology of risk. Psychological Science, 12(3), 185-190. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00334

Zürn, M. K., Gerten, J., & Topolinski, S. (2021). Maybe favors: How to get more good deeds done. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000357
 

Michael K. Zürn is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Cologne where he investigates the cognitive processes underlying economic behavior.

Environmentalists Are Better Cooperators—and They Benefit From It

Why do people protect the environment? There are many ways to do so, but they all carry personal costs in terms of time, energy, or money. Many people desire to protect the planet, but why does this desire persist, despite it being so costly to act on this desire? Our research suggests one important benefit: being seen to protect the environment.

We proposed that pro-environmental actions carry information about the actor. Everyone benefits from a clean environment, whether it is clean air, clean water, or sustainable use of resources. When one person protects the environment, everyone in it benefits. Therefore, pro-environmental actions can function as signals (probably unconscious ones) that a person cares about others—specifically everyone who benefits from that environment. This is useful information when others decide whom to trust, befriend, hire, or date: they know that the environmentalist will likely care, and therefore cooperate.

Pro-Environmental People Really Are More Cooperative

We conducted two online crowdsourced studies using an experimental game in which participants received a pile of money, and had to decide how much to share with their partner. Their partner received a similar pile of money and was making the same sharing decision. The experimenter doubled any money that was shared, so that both could walk away with twice as much money if they both acted cooperatively by sharing everything. However, partners were not obligated to share, and decisions were made separately and simultaneously, so participants risked walking out with zero if they gave away money when their partner didn’t.

In both studies, people who reported engaging in more pro-environmental behaviors tended to give more money to their partners. In other words, environmentalists were more generous partners, which supports the basic idea that people’s environmentalism could provide information about their cooperativeness.

Do People Advertise Their Environmentalism To Attract Others’ Trust?

In two other studies, people could donate money to an environmental charity. Indeed, people did use environmentalism as a signal: they donated more money to the environment when their decisions were known to an observer with whom they’d soon play the cooperative game described above. Furthermore, they donated the most money to the environment when they were competing to be chosen by an observer to play the game. In other words, they competed to be more environmental than others!

Participants benefited from their pro-environmental donations: they were chosen more often to play the game than the less environmental people were, and their partners cooperated more often with them in the game. So, it really does pay to be “seen to be green”!

This signaling sounds devious, but instead it was honest: people who donated more to the environment also donated more money to their partners in the game they actually played afterwards. This means that observers benefited from trusting environmentalists and choosing them as partners. This was no small effect—participants’ donations to the environment were a strong predictor of how cooperative they were. So, if you want a cooperative partner, you might consider using a person’s environmentalism to predict how cooperative they will be.

Is There Anything Special About Environmentalism?

We doubt it—environmentalism is just one way of cooperating with others. You can assess someone’s cooperativeness from other cues, such as other kinds of generosity (and some of our previous research shows the same effects with more general generosity). Protecting the environment is just one highly visible way of being prosocial—arguably benefiting many people at the same time.

Environmentalism is politically polarized in North America, and is currently associated with liberals. We don’t know if our results would generalize to all groups, though we do note that some of our studies used an ideologically diverse online sample that was recruited from the community. We suspect that conservative groups would signal their environmentalism and value environmentalists, if it were an environment that conservatives cared about, like conserving wetlands for duck hunting or protecting ranches from industrial contamination. After all, it was Republican president Richard Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent toxic pollution. Thus, there is good reason to believe that our results will generalize to many kinds of people.

Altogether, our research suggests a way to motivate pro-environmental action: make it public, and make it clear that others benefit from a good environment. Then, and only then, can pro-environmentalism signal a person’s concern for others and allow environmentalists to benefit from a good reputation. And if environmental actions bring benefits, more people will do them, leading to even more benefits down the road.


For Further Reading

Barclay, P., & Barker, J.L. (2020). Greener than thou: People who protect the environment are more cooperative, compete to be environmental, and benefit from reputation. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 72, 101441. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101441 [This article is Open Access.]

Barclay, P. (2013). Strategies for cooperation in biological markets, especially for humans. Evolution & Human Behavior, 34(3), 164-175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.02.002
 

Pat Barclay is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Guelph, where he teaches about cooperation, evolution, risk-taking, and critical thinking.