The perception and evaluation of environmental and architectural spaces is an important concern of environmental psychology. Various environments ranging in scope from landscapes to room interiors have been studied, but old buildings have seldom been studied. As historical buildings make way for modern buildings, preservation of historic buildings has often been a hot issue. Proponents for preservation argue for the beauty, harmony and character of these buildings and that people derive satisfaction from them. This study examined the perception and evaluation of old-style buildings (constructed in late 18 th to early 19 th century) and modern-style buildings on three dimensions: aesthetic evaluation, organization, and friendliness. In addition, the effect of frequency of exposure on the ratings of these buildings as stimuli was studied. Two hundred and thirty-six university students rated each of the three old-style and three modern-style buildings on a set of fifteen bipolar adjectives scales. The frequency of exposure of each building was manipulated within subject. Repeated-measures analyses of variance revealed significant differences between the ratings. The modern-style buildings were evaluated as more aesthetically appealing and perceived as less organized and more complex than the old-style buildings. The effect of frequency of exposure was significant on the aesthetic evaluation dimension only. The relationship was in the form of an inverted U-shape function. However, no interaction effect was found. The results could be explained by Berlyne’s hypothesis ( 1960 , 1970 ) and Zajonc’s mere exposure hypothesis ( 1968 ). Although the study was conducted in the 1980s, the psychological effects of perception and evaluation may remain the same. Given the scarcity and paucity of research on heritage buildings in the discipline of psychology, this paper reviews current research literature in the subject area, discusses if and to what extent the results still hold true, and proposes a way forward.

There is a lack of research on people’s psychological perceptions to decay or patina that is part of the historic environment. Built heritage conservation doctrine and law are based on the assumption that all people have a similar, positive aesthetic perception to patina in the built environment, although there are very few empirical studies that have attempted to confirm or challenge this assumption. This study is based on the statistical analysis of survey data from 864 people in the United States who ranked 24 images of old, decayed building materials and 7 control images of new building materials based on aesthetic qualities, condition, and perceived age. The results indicate that people do not like decayed earthen building materials, concrete, or ferrous metals and have a neutral opinion of the aesthetic qualities of aged brick, preferring new brick as well as aged wood. While there are small differences based on race, ethnicity, and gender, the largest difference in responses is between people who work in the historic preservation/CRM field and those who do not. This finding appears to indicate that people who work in these fields have a different psychological response to decay/patina in the built environment than laypeople, which has important ramifications in terms of decision-making processes regarding interventions in the older built environment.

In the COVID-19 situation, social and behavioral science evidence is accumulating rapidly through online data collection, but the options to share and publish this information are scarce. As a remedy, I recommend the adoption of micropublishing in the fields of social and behavioral sciences. While micropublishing has been gaining popularity, it is not yet widely accepted or utilized by existing academic journals. Greater implementation would improve the availability of data in the immediate COVID-19 era and establish a post-COVID-19 publishing methodology that could increase researcher and practitioner engagement in real time. I recommend micropublishing in a specific manner that bifurcates an experiment’s methodology or survey method from the subsequently published data based on that experiment protocol. Published findings could be presented in a series and edited as new data emerges. This publishing system promotes cumulative science. To provide a visual example that supports my argument, I created a demo journal with sample papers organized according to the structure I recommend. The demo journal has features—except a Digital Object Finder (DOI)—that make it possible to publish social and behavioral sciences research. It could be replicated for a newly established journal. Alternatively, existing journals could add a section dedicated to micropublication.

Implicit bias training (IBT) is now frequently provided by employers, in order to raise awareness of the problems related to implicit biases, and of how to safeguard against discrimination that may result. However, as Atewologun et al. ( 2018 ) have noted, there is very little systematicity in IBT, and there are many unknowns about what constitutes good IBT. One important issue concerns the tone of information provided regarding implicit bias. This paper engages this question, focusing in particular on the observation that much bias training is delivered in exculpatory tone, emphasising that individuals are not to blame for possessing implicit biases. Normative guidance around IBT exhorts practitioners to adopt this strategy ( Moss-Racusin et al. 2014 ). However, existing evidence about the effects of moralized feedback about implicit bias is equivocal ( Legault et al. 2011 ; Czopp et al. 2006 ). Through a series of studies, culminating in an experiment with a pre-registered analysis plan, we develop a paradigm for evaluating the impact of moralized feedback on participants’ implicit racial bias scores. We also conducted exploratory analyses of the impact on their moods, and behavioural intentions. Our results indicated that an exculpatory tone, rather than a blaming or neutral tone, did not make participants less resistant to changing their attitudes and behaviours. In fact, participants in the blame condition had significantly stronger explicit intentions to change future behaviour than those in the ‘no feedback’ condition (see experiment 3). These results indicate that considerations of efficacy do not support the need for implicit bias feedback to be exculpatory. We tease out the implications of these findings, and directions for future research.

Psychological research can be used to understand people’s perceptions and attitudes toward historic environments. Understanding the public’s attitudes toward historic sites can help to improve decisions about the preservation and management of these places. This paper reviews a series of studies examining three historic Catholic Missions in central California: Missions San Miguel, San Luis Obispo, and La Purisima. These missions have very different histories and uses. Mission San Miguel is one of the best preserved of the California Missions; however, its fragility limits use of the Mission by its parish. Mission San Luis Obispo has been substantially rebuilt over the years; it has an active parish and is a focal point for tourism in the city. Mission La Purisima was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1800s and rebuilt as a WPA project in the 1930s. It is currently a state historic park located in a rural setting. The research on these missions examined perceptions of authenticity and sacredness of the places. These perceptions were linked to attitudes about appropriate uses of the missions (for example, the appropriateness of tourism) and how the missions should be managed.

A robust dialogue about the (un)reliability of psychological science findings has emerged in recent years. In response, metascience researchers have developed innovative tools to increase rigor, transparency, and reproducibility, stimulating rapid improvement and adoption of open science practices. However, existing reproducibility guidelines are geared toward purely quantitative study designs. This leaves some ambiguity as to how such guidelines should be implemented in mixed methods (MM) studies, which combine quantitative and qualitative research. Drawing on extant literature, our own experiences, and feedback from 79 self-identified MM researchers, the current paper addresses two main questions: (a) how and to what extent do existing reproducibility guidelines apply to MM study designs; and (b) can existing reproducibility guidelines be improved by incorporating best practices from qualitative research and epistemology? In answer, we offer 10 key recommendations for use within and outside of MM research. Finally, we argue that good science and good ethical practice are mutually reinforcing and lead to meaningful, credible science.

Does belief in free will increase support for economic inequality? Five studies using diverse measures and methods tested this question. Study 1 finds belief in free will is associated with increased support for inequality. Study 2 manipulates belief in free will and does not find evidence that this changes support for inequality. Studies 3 and 4 find that people are more willing to support inequality in a hypothetical universe where free will exists compared to one where it does not ( dz = 0.10–0.13), indicating that people believe the existence of free will justifies inequality. However, a between-subjects design in Study 5 fails to replicate this finding. Overall, our results suggest that if belief in free will increases support for economic inequality, the effect is likely small and potentially sensitive to the methods used to detect it.

Reports of experiences of ownership over a fake hand following simple multisensory stimulation (the ‘rubber hand illusion’) have generated an expansive literature. Because such reports might reflect suggestion effects, demand characteristics are routinely controlled for by contrasting agreement ratings for ‘illusion’ and ‘control’ conditions. However, these methods have never been validated, and recent evidence that response to imaginative suggestion (‘phenomenological control’) predicts illusion report prompts reconsideration of their efficacy. A crucial assumption of the standard approach is that demand characteristics are matched across conditions. Here, a quasi-experiment design was employed to test demand characteristics in rubber hand illusion reports. Participants were provided with information about the rubber hand illusion procedure (text description and video demonstration) and recorded expectancies for standard ‘illusion’ and ‘control’ statements. Expectancies for ‘control’ and ‘illusion’ statements in synchronous and asynchronous conditions were found to differ similarly to published illusion reports. Therefore, rubber hand illusion control methods which have been in use for 22 years are not fit for purpose. Because demand characteristics have not been controlled in illusion report in existing studies, the illusion may be, partially or entirely, a suggestion effect. Methods to develop robust controls are proposed. That confounding demand characteristics have been overlooked for decades may be attributable to a lack of awareness that demand characteristics can drive experience in psychological science.

We explore the development of habitual responding within the colour-word contingency learning paradigm, in which participants respond to the colour of neutral words. Each word is most often presented in one colour. Learning is indicated by faster responses to the colour when the word is presented in the expected rather than in the unexpected colour. In Experiment 1, participants took part in two sessions, separated by one day. Critically, one set of words was trained across both days, and other new sets of words were introduced at various time points. Overall performance was faster on trials with overtrained words. Additionally, contingency effects were larger for overtrained words than for words introduced on Day 2. Removing the contingency had a similar impact on the learning effect for overtrained and new words. However, during a counterconditioning phase, where the words were made predictive of new colours, the previous contingency continued to influence performance for overtrained words but not for more recently introduced words. Relatedly, the new contingency was not acquired for the overtrained words. The reverse pattern was observed for recently-introduced words, with the newly-introduced contingency rapidly acquired and the influence of the old contingency quickly extinguished. In Experiments 2 and 3, however, both new and old learning effects were observed for both overtrained and recently-acquired contingencies. The net results suggest that while contingency learning effects are highly pliable during initial and subsequent learning, early-acquired contingency knowledge is maintained after removal of the contingency. Implications for models of learning are discussed.

People display systematic priorities to self-related stimuli. As the self is not a unified entity, however, it remains unclear which aspects of the self are crucial to producing this stimulus prioritization. To explore this issue, we manipulated the valence of the self-concept (good me vs. bad me) — a core identity-based facet of the self — using a standard shape-label association task in which participants initially learned the associations (e.g., circle/good-self, triangle/good-other, diamond/bad-self, square/bad-other), after which they completed shape-label matching and shape-categorization tasks, such that attention was directed to different aspects of the stimuli (i.e., self-relevance and valence). The results revealed that responses were more efficient to the good-self shape (vs. other shapes), regardless of the task that was undertaken. A hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) analysis indicated that this good-self prioritization effect was underpinned by differences in the rate of information uptake. These findings demonstrate that activation of the good-self representation exclusively facilitates perceptual decision-making, thereby furthering understanding of the self-prioritization effect.

When individuals are exposed to their own image in a mirror, known to increase self-awareness, they may show increased accessibility of suicide-related words (a phenomenon labeled “the mirror effect”; Selimbegović & Chatard, 2013 ). We attempted to replicate this effect in a pre-registered study (N = 150). As in the original study, self-awareness was manipulated using a mirror and recognition latencies for accurately detecting suicide-related words, negative words, and neutral words in a lexical decision task were assessed. We found no evidence of the mirror effect in pre-registered analyses. A multiverse analysis revealed a significant mirror effect only when excluding extreme observations. An equivalence TOST test did not yield evidence for or against the mirror effect. Overall, the results suggest that the original effect was a false positive or that the conditions for obtaining it (in terms of statistical power and/or outlier detection method) are not yet fully understood. Implications for the mirror effect and recommendations for pre-registered replications are discussed.

There is ample evidence that watching sports induces strong emotions that translate into manifold consequential behaviours. However, it is rather ill-understood how exactly spectators’ emotions unfold during soccer matches and what determines their intensity. To address these questions, we used the 2018 FIFA World Cup as a natural quasi-experiment to conduct a pre-registered study on spectators’ emotional experiences. Employing an app-based experience-sampling design, we tracked 251 German spectators during the tournament and assessed high-resolution changes in core affect (valence, activation) throughout soccer matches. Across the three German matches, multi-level models revealed that all spectators exhibited strong changes on both affective dimensions in response to Germany’s performance. Although fans experienced slightly more intense affect than non-fans, particularly during losses, this moderating effect was very small in comparison to the magnitude of the affective fluctuations that occurred independent of fan identity. Taken together, the findings suggest group emotions (collectively felt emotion irrespective of individual affiliation) rather than group-affiliation based emotions (individually felt emotion because of an affiliated group), as the dominant process underlying spectator affect during the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Dishonesty is an intriguing phenomenon, studied extensively across various disciplines due to its impact on people’s lives as well as society in general. To examine dishonesty in a controlled setting, researchers have developed a number of experimental paradigms. One of the most popular approaches in this regard, is the matrix task, in which participants receive matrices wherein they have to find two numbers that sum to 10 (e.g., 4.81 and 5.19), under time pressure. In a next phase, participants need to report how many matrices they had solved correctly, allowing them the opportunity to cheat by exaggerating their performance in order to get a larger reward. Here, we argue, both on theoretical and empirical grounds, that the matrix task is ill-suited to study dishonest behavior, primarily because it conflates cheating with honest mistakes. We therefore recommend researchers to use different paradigms to examine dishonesty, and treat (previous) findings based on the matrix task with due caution.

We present a collection of emotional video clips that can be used in ways similar to static images (e.g., the International Affective Picture System, IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008 ). The Database of Emotional Videos from Ottawa (DEVO) includes 291 brief video clips (mean duration = 5.42 s; SD = 2.89 s; range = 3–15 s) extracted from obscure sources to reduce their familiarity and to avoid influencing participants’ emotional responses. In Study 1, ratings of valence and arousal (measured with the Self Assessment Manikins from IAPS) and impact ( Croucher, Calder, Ramponi, Barnard, & Murphy, 2011 ) were collected from 154 participants (82 women; mean age = 19.88 years; SD = 2.83 years), in a between-subjects design to avoid potential halo effects across the three ratings ( Saal, Downey, & Lahey, 1980 ). Ratings collected online in a new set of 124 students with a within-subjects design (Study 2) were significantly correlated with the original sample’s. The clips were unfamiliar, having been seen previously by fewer than 2% of participants on average. The ratings consistently revealed the expected U-shaped relationships between valence and arousal/impact, and a strong positive correlation between arousal and impact. Hierarchical cluster analysis of the Study 1 ratings suggested seven groups of clips varying in valence, arousal, and impact, although the Study 2 ratings suggested five groups of clips. These clips should prove useful for a wide range of research on emotion and behaviour.

Trait self-control is often defined as the ability to inhibit dominant responses including thoughts, emotions, and behavioral impulses. Despite the pivotal role of inhibition for trait self-control, a growing body of evidence found small-to-zero correlations between self-report measures of trait self-control and behavioral inhibition tasks. These observations seem puzzling considering that both types of measures are often seen as operationalizations of the same or at least closely related theoretical constructs. Previous explanations for this non-correspondence focused on psychometric properties of the measures. Here, we discuss three further factors that may explain the empirical non-correspondence between trait self-control scales and behavioral inhibition tasks: (1) the distinction between typical and maximum performance, (2) the measurement of single versus repeated performance, and (3) differences between impulses in different domains. Specifically, we argue that a) self-report measures of trait self-control are designed to assess typical performance, and relative to these, behavioral inhibition tasks are designed to assess maximum performance; b) self-report measures of trait self-control capture central tendencies of aggregates of many different instances of behavior, whereas behavioral inhibition tasks are momentary, one-time state measures; and c) most self-report measures of trait self-control are designed to measure general, cross-domain inhibition, whereas behavioral inhibition tasks also measure narrower, domain-specific inhibition to a substantial degree. In conclusion, we argue that it is implausible to hypothesize more than a low correlation between self-report measures of trait self-control and behavioral inhibition tasks as they genuinely focus on different aspects of the theoretical construct of self-control. We also discuss the broader implications of these issues for self-control as a theoretical construct and its appropriate measurement.

Relationship satisfaction can be assessed in retrospection, as a global evaluation, or as a momentary state. In two experience sampling studies ( N = 130, N = 510) the specificities of these assessment modalities are examined. We show that 1) compared to other summary statistics like the median, the mean of relationship satisfaction states describes retrospective and global evaluations best (but the difference to some other summary statistics was negligible); 2) retrospection introduces an overestimation of the average annoyance in the relationship reported on a momentary basis, which results in an overall negative mean-level bias for retrospective relationship satisfaction; 3) this bias is most strongly moderated by global relationship satisfaction at the time of retrospection; 4) snapshots of momentary relationship satisfaction get representative of global evaluations after approximately two weeks of sampling. The findings extend the recall bias reported in the literature for retrospection of negative affect to the domain of relationship evaluations and assist researchers in designing efficient experience sampling studies.

Are people with heightened autistic traits less likely to help other people? Recent research suggests that heightened autistic traits are associated with reduced self-reported prosocial behavior among college students. However, the growing literature examining sub-clinical traits associated with autism, or the Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP), among college students has invested insufficient attention in replication of findings, potential interrelationships between constructs, or the degree to which social desirability bias may contribute to findings. To identify replicable aspects of the BAP, we administered a battery of measures to 391 undergraduate students. Replicating prior work, findings suggested that self-reported difficulties understanding the self and others (but not less feeling for others) and sensory atypicalities are core aspects of the BAP. Reduced social desirability bias was also associated with the BAP. Prior associations between reduced prosocial tendencies and the BAP were not replicated. Findings highlight the importance of assessing multiple potential aspects of the BAP, particularly reduced susceptibility to the social desirability bias, when using self-report measures.

Under what conditions does prosocial spending promote happiness? In a series of appropriately powered and pre-registered experiments, the present research revisited the role of impact, social connection, and perceived choice in maximizing the emotional benefits of spending money on others. In two exploratory studies, we found that happy (vs. less happy) prosocial spending experiences were marked by higher levels of impact, social connection and perceived choice (Study 1a and 1b). Consistent with these initial findings, three pre-registered studies confirmed that spending money on others was particularly rewarding when people were able to see the difference their generosity made (Study 2); when they felt a sense of social connection to the person or cause they were helping (Study 3); and when they felt that the decision to help was freely chosen (Study 4). Together, our findings corroborate previous research on impact, social connection and perceived choice, and highlight the importance of considering these key variables when evaluating old and new evidence on the emotional benefits of prosocial spending. In addition, our findings suggest that charitable organizations and policymakers should review their current solicitation strategies and pay more attention to people’s sense of impact, connection and choice when seeking charitable donations.

The Response Time-Based Concealed Information Test (RT-CIT) can reveal when a person recognizes a relevant ( probe ) item among other, irrelevant items, based on comparatively slower responding to the probe item. Thereby, if a person is concealing the knowledge about the relevance of this item (e.g., recognizing it as a murder weapon), this deception can be revealed. So far, the RT-CIT has been used only on desktop computers. In Experiment 1 ( n = 72; within-subject), we compare the probe-irrelevant differences when using the conventional desktop-based CIT to using a smartphone-based CIT, demonstrating practical equivalence. In Experiment 2 ( n = 116; within-subject), we demonstrate that using thumbs for responses (while holding the smartphone) leads to equally efficient CIT results as using conventional index finger responses. At the same time, this second experiment also demonstrates how smartphone-based studies may be efficiently run in large groups, using the participants’ own smartphones. Finally, as an interesting addition, here for the first time we also measured keypress durations (i.e., the time durations of holding down the response keys) in the RT-CIT, which we found to be significantly shorter for probe than for irrelevant items.

One of the most extreme expressions of prejudice is likening groups to non-human beings. Previous research relates disgust to dehumanization of social groups. However, prior studies have not examined other negative emotions in relation to dehumanization. We examined whether three emotions – anger, disgust, and fear – are associated with dehumanization of social groups. In Experiments 1 and 2 we tested these relationships measuring reactions to real groups. We found that all three emotions were uniquely related to animalistic and humanity-denial dehumanization, but only fear was related to mechanistic dehumanization. Using an orthogonal emotion grid measure in Experiment 3, we showed anger to play a primary role in dehumanization among a variety of target groups. Finally, in Experiment 4 we manipulated whether a novel group was abnormal or harmful, and found that both groups elicited more dehumanization than the control group; however, the harmful group elicited dehumanization mediated by anger and the abnormal group elicited dehumanization mediated by disgust. From this evidence, we argue that other emotions besides disgust play an important part in the dehumanization of outgroups.