Salient stimuli have the potential to distract us from our immediate goals. Much research has therefore aimed to understand how we learn to use attention to resist distraction by salient stimuli. We propose a new hypothe...Salient stimuli have the potential to distract us from our immediate goals. Much research has therefore aimed to understand how we learn to use attention to resist distraction by salient stimuli. We propose a new hypothesis whereby an initial instance of distraction can improve future suppression of salient stimuli. Across three experiments ( = 120 college students, aged 18-35 years), we provide evidence for this hypothesis using a new eye-tracking approach. The results demonstrated that an initial instance of distraction occurred before salient distractors were suppressed. Notably, if this initial instance of distraction was eliminated or weakened via experimental manipulations, learned suppression of the distracting stimuli was greatly reduced. Together, these findings suggest that attentional capture can serve as a learning signal that improves future attentional control. They also indicate that learned suppression emerges rapidly, which has strong implications for models of attention and cognitive control.
Social situations are key determinants of cognition and behavior, and although several frameworks for representing situations have been proposed, these remain partial, nonintegrated, and not systematically mapped onto th...Social situations are key determinants of cognition and behavior, and although several frameworks for representing situations have been proposed, these remain partial, nonintegrated, and not systematically mapped onto the rich space of situations encountered in everyday life. We address this problem by analyzing more than 20,000 detailed textual descriptions of dyadic social interactions obtained from participant-generated stories, published fiction, blogs, and autobiographical narratives. Our main methodological contribution is to use generative artificial intelligence to code these textual descriptions along a very large set of features and derive a detailed taxonomy of situational classes or categories of social interactions. We subsequently relate these situational classes to high-level situational variables like conflict, power, and duty, which have been identified by prior theory. In this way, our article provides a comprehensive, data-driven, and integrative framework for quantifying situational structure, advancing the study of social cognition and behavior.
Evidence from cross-sectional studies suggests that people who eat more meat tend to report somewhat lower depression-a link that, if causal, could have important implications for mental health. However, little is known...Evidence from cross-sectional studies suggests that people who eat more meat tend to report somewhat lower depression-a link that, if causal, could have important implications for mental health. However, little is known about why meat consumption is associated with depression. We examined the nature and magnitude of this association in three large, representative, longitudinal samples in the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia (total = 77,678, aged 14-102 years). Adjusting for income, age, education, and gender, we observed a weak association of β = -0.05 between meat consumption and depression that was not moderated by living context. Moreover, the longitudinal within-person association was very small (β = -0.01) and lagged within-person effects were not significant, casting doubt on a direct causal association. Overall, results do not support low meat consumption as an important risk factor for depression.
Conspiracy mentality is conceptualized as a continuum. Research on this topic has focused on unwarranted conspiracy claims and the upper end of the conspiracy-mentality continuum-people seeing conspiracies everywhere. Th...Conspiracy mentality is conceptualized as a continuum. Research on this topic has focused on unwarranted conspiracy claims and the upper end of the conspiracy-mentality continuum-people seeing conspiracies everywhere. This focus neglects warranted conspiracy claims and the lower end of the continuum. To better understand conspiracy mentality, we aimed to clarify both ends of the continuum using signal detection theory. We examined how people evaluate warranted and unwarranted conspiracy claims across levels of conspiracy mentality in two studies with 331 French-speaking adult participants from France, Switzerland, and Belgium (Study 1) and 576 English-speaking adult participants from the United States and the United Kingdom (Study 2), both groups recruited via Prolific. Compared with participants high in conspiracy mentality, those low in conspiracy mentality not only believed less in conspiracies but also underestimated their prevalence. However, participants low in conspiracy mentality were more accurate at distinguishing warranted from unwarranted conspiracy claims. These results provide a better understanding of conspiracy mentality and its relationship with the perceived truthfulness of conspiracies.
This is a registered report to directly replicate the primary finding in Hecht and Proffitt (1995). Hecht and Proffitt found that those with occupational experience handling liquid in containers performed worse at solvin...This is a registered report to directly replicate the primary finding in Hecht and Proffitt (1995). Hecht and Proffitt found that those with occupational experience handling liquid in containers performed worse at solving a water-level problem than those in occupations that did not require handling liquids. Shortly after, Vasta et al. (1997) found the opposite: Experience was associated with superior performance on the task. The conflicting findings and the small sample sizes in each study leave the relationship between experience and water-level-task performance uncertain. We addressed these concerns with a high-powered direct replication of Hecht and Proffitt with adults in Germany ( = 407). We failed to replicate Hecht and Proffitt's results, finding that their study had less than 33% power to detect the small, nonsignificant difference that we observed between groups.
Metacognition involves second-order judgments about first-order judgments. It remains unclear whether an individual's confidence in being correct is generated by the same system across tasks () or whether it is computed...Metacognition involves second-order judgments about first-order judgments. It remains unclear whether an individual's confidence in being correct is generated by the same system across tasks () or whether it is computed independently in the context of each task (). Previous studies have focused on correlations across several tasks, yet the evidence is mixed, and more complex models of domain generality were not taken into account. Analyzing data from 10 tasks collected across three studies in Denmark and Poland ( = 253-547 adult participants), we found a fixed pattern of cross-task correlations for both metacognitive bias and metacognitive efficiency. In accordance with previous studies, we found that hierarchical estimation of metacognitive efficiency led to higher correlations. We used confirmatory factor analyses to investigate the existence of general processes. We found evidence for a weak domain generality with a metacognitive module for perceptual tasks and another for cognitive tasks.
Pretending not to know requires appreciating how one would behave without a given piece of knowledge and acting accordingly. Here, two game-based experiments reveal a capacity to simulate decision-making under such count...Pretending not to know requires appreciating how one would behave without a given piece of knowledge and acting accordingly. Here, two game-based experiments reveal a capacity to simulate decision-making under such counterfactual ignorance. English-speaking adults ( = 1,001) saw the solution to a game (ship locations in Battleship, the hidden word in Hangman) but attempted to play as though they never had this information. Pretenders accurately mimicked broad aspects of genuine play, including the number of guesses required to reach a solution, as well as subtle patterns, such as the effects of decision uncertainty on decision time. Although peers were unable to detect pretense, statistical analysis and computational modeling uncovered traces of overacting in pretenders' decisions, suggesting a schematic simulation of their minds. Opening up a new approach to studying self-simulation, our results reveal intricate metacognitive knowledge about decision-making, drawn from a rich-but simplified-internal model of cognition.
Crockford SK, Satta E, Severino I
… +6 more, Fiacchino D, Vitale A, Bertelsen N, Busuoli EM, Mandelli V, Lombardo MV
Psychol Sci
· 2026 Feb · PMID 41632583
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Full text
Do individuals possess a "gaze fingerprint" that reveals how they uniquely look at the world? We tested this question by examining intra- and intersubject gaze similarity across 700 static pictures of complex natural sce...Do individuals possess a "gaze fingerprint" that reveals how they uniquely look at the world? We tested this question by examining intra- and intersubject gaze similarity across 700 static pictures of complex natural scenes. Independent discovery ( = 105) and replication data sets ( = 46) of adults aged 18 to 50 years (sampled from Italy and Germany) revealed that gaze fingerprinting is possible at relatively high rates (e.g., 52%-63%) compared with chance (e.g., 1%-2%). We also identify , which reveal a unique individualized code describing which stimuli an individual can be gaze-fingerprinted on. Preregistered longitudinal follow-up experiments have shown that gaze-fingerprint barcodes are nonrandom within an individual over short and long time fraframmes. Finally, we find that increased gaze fingerprintability for social stimuli is associated with decreased levels of autistic traits. To summarize, this work showcases the potential of gaze fingerprinting for isolating traitlike factors that may be of high neurodevelopmental and biological significance.
Nedergaard and Lupyan (2024) presented four studies aimed at validating anendophasia (i.e., experiencing no inner speech). However, Lind (2025) held that no one, including Nedergaard and Lupyan, has demonstrated that ane...Nedergaard and Lupyan (2024) presented four studies aimed at validating anendophasia (i.e., experiencing no inner speech). However, Lind (2025) held that no one, including Nedergaard and Lupyan, has demonstrated that anendophasia exists. In both articles, the authors support their positions using the findings of descriptive experience sampling. Here, I show that descriptive experience sampling is a fidelity-aspiring method; I highlight the distinction between fidelity and validity (an important distinction for psychological science in general and for anendophasia in particular). Anendophasia is an experiential phenomenon, not a construct, and therefore requires incorporating fidelity-based investigations. Nedergaard and Lupyan treated anendophasia as a construct (providing validity-based investigations), but drew phenomenon-based conclusions. I distinguish between completely and mostly anendophasic individuals, noting that, in practice, that distinction might be impossible to make. I suggest that anendophasic (or at least mostly anendophasic) individuals do in fact exist (probably frequently) and are worthy of fidelity-based (as well as validational) investigations.
Prosocial behavior is common and often socially rewarded (e.g., via liking, status, and trust). Yet prior research has found that if actors themselves also benefit from their prosocial behavior, then they are morally der...Prosocial behavior is common and often socially rewarded (e.g., via liking, status, and trust). Yet prior research has found that if actors themselves also benefit from their prosocial behavior, then they are morally derogated: They are evaluated as worse than purely selfish actors. This has been explained by the use of different counterfactuals for the evaluation of prosocial and selfish actors. Here I propose , which explains why evaluators use these different counterfactuals in the first place: Social rewards are treated as being reserved for costly prosocial actions. Claiming such rewards without incurring costs seems like cheating and thus deserves moral derogation. Accordingly, being transparent about the action's costs and benefits prevents such derogation. I conducted six experiments (five preregistered) with Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers in the United States and lab participants in Spain (total = 4,732 adults). The findings provide support for the proposed functional explanation of tainted altruism, which also sheds light on related phenomena, such as overhead aversion and hypocrisy.
Psychol Sci
· 2026 Jan · PMID 41499418
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Full text
People overaccept information that supports their identity and underaccept information that opposes their identity-a phenomenon known as . Although partisan-bias effects in judgments of misinformation are robust and perv...People overaccept information that supports their identity and underaccept information that opposes their identity-a phenomenon known as . Although partisan-bias effects in judgments of misinformation are robust and pervasive, there is ongoing debate about whether partisan-bias effects arise from identity-protective motivated reasoning or differential knowledge of identity-congenial versus identity-uncongenial information. Prior empirical work has been unable to differentiate the two accounts because of a reliance on groups with pre-existing differences in knowledge (e.g., Democrats and Republicans). The current research addresses this issue by using randomly assigned rather than pre-existing identities. Across two experiments ( = 1,411), adult U.S. Prolific workers showed lower thresholds for accepting information that is congenial versus uncongenial to a randomly assigned identity, despite having no differences in prior knowledge. These results support theories that emphasize identity protection as a factor underlying partisan bias in the acceptance of misinformation, with important practical implications for misinformation interventions.
An inherent feature of any choice is the set size from which that choice is made (i.e., the number of available options in a choice set). Choice set size impacts the likelihood of landing on a more preferred option: Larg...An inherent feature of any choice is the set size from which that choice is made (i.e., the number of available options in a choice set). Choice set size impacts the likelihood of landing on a more preferred option: Larger sets are more likely to contain an option matching one's preferences. Nevertheless, in six preregistered experiments with 10,092 U.S. adults, we demonstrated that people consistently underestimated the effect of set size when predicting others' liking for a chosen option. We propose this effect arises because, although people recognize that set size predicts liking of a chosen option, they typically fail to attend to it when considering others' choices. Accordingly, this effect was attenuated when attention was drawn to set size, specifically (a) when participants considered multiple set sizes simultaneously, (b) when the decision process was framed as ranking rather than choosing, or (c) when participants were prompted to recall set size before predicting others' preferences.
Context drives our interpretations of music as surprising, frightening, or awe-inspiring. However, it remains unclear how formal musical training affects our ability to hierarchically integrate complex tonal information...Context drives our interpretations of music as surprising, frightening, or awe-inspiring. However, it remains unclear how formal musical training affects our ability to hierarchically integrate complex tonal information to efficiently predict, remember, and segment music. We scrambled naturalistic music at multiple timescales to manipulate coherent tonal context while controlling for multiple acoustic cues. Memory (Experiment 1; = 108, age range = 19-41 years) and prediction (Experiment 2; = 108, age range = 20-41 years) improved with more intact context for both musicians and nonmusicians. Listeners' event boundaries were influenced by the amount of tonal context but also reflected nested phrase structure, and musicians were more sensitive to longer-timescale "hyperphrase" structure (Experiment 3; = 95, age range = 20-42 years) and could better identify the amount of scrambling (Experiment 4; = 108, age range = 19-41 years). These results indicate that listeners integrate tonal context across complex phrases to efficiently encode, predict, and segment naturalistic music and that in general, training has surprisingly little impact on this integration.
Americans readily identify with class labels, such as and . In turn, these identities affect their social affiliations, cultural values, and physical health. Despite theoretical predictions that class identity can chang...Americans readily identify with class labels, such as and . In turn, these identities affect their social affiliations, cultural values, and physical health. Despite theoretical predictions that class identity can change, little work has empirically examined the long-term malleability of class identity. Here we ask, can class identity change in the long term? And if so, when? We tested this question by examining whether the 2008 Great Recession changed how Americans viewed their social and economic standing in society-that is, their class identity. In three of four data sets (total = 164,296), we found that the 2008 Great Recession shifted Americans toward identifying as a lower class. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of the formation of class identity and for the political and social development of the United States following 2008.
A fundamental underlying question about the nature of overconfidence has continued to be subject to scholarly dispute: Is overconfidence a genuine psychological trait? To advance this contested research topic, we engaged...A fundamental underlying question about the nature of overconfidence has continued to be subject to scholarly dispute: Is overconfidence a genuine psychological trait? To advance this contested research topic, we engaged in an adversarial collaboration in which two research teams agreed upon a set of critical tests and preregistered their analyses and predictions prior to data collection. Our study ( = 942; U.S. adults from CloudConnect) leverages a methodological innovation: To measure trait overconfidence absent task-related confounds, we developed a set of novel tasks in which performance is ostensibly random. When we assess confidence this way, we find robust relationships across tasks as measured by both confirmatory factor analyses and raw correlations. This indicates that some people do believe that they are able to perform relatively well on tasks even when there is little reason for that confidence. Our results support the claim that overconfidence might be a trait.
To navigate the world, our minds must represent not only how things are now (perception) but also how they are about to be (prediction). However, perception and prediction blur together for objects in motion, a classic f...To navigate the world, our minds must represent not only how things are now (perception) but also how they are about to be (prediction). However, perception and prediction blur together for objects in motion, a classic finding known as "representational momentum." If you glance at a photo of a person diving into a lake, you will tend to remember them closer to the water than they really were. In seven experiments (with adult participants from the United States) we show that this phenomenon transcends motion: Our minds make predictions that distort our memories about changes that involve no motion whatsoever, including changes in brightness, color saturation, and proportion. Additionally, we use representational momentum to map the limits of automatic prediction, showing that there are no analogous effects for changes in hue. Our automatic predictions distort our memories in many domains-not just motion-and the presence or absence of these distortions expose the inner workings of perception, cognition, and memory.
Across five studies and one supplementary study (five preregistered; = 3,215 adults), we found that men, more than women, avoided shared experiences (e.g., going to the movies, sharing food) with individuals of the same...Across five studies and one supplementary study (five preregistered; = 3,215 adults), we found that men, more than women, avoided shared experiences (e.g., going to the movies, sharing food) with individuals of the same gender. Furthermore, persistent societal expectations that men should be unambiguously heterosexual underpinned this pattern: Men felt more apprehensive about signaling same-gender romance in platonic relationships than women did. In turn, romantic prototypicality drove the pattern of men (more than women) avoiding shared activities, above and beyond differences in how hedonic, enjoyable, and feminine the activities were; our findings further suggested that men's reluctance to share these experiences was due to pressure to conform to societal expectations rather than solely a personal preference. This research offers insight into how, despite evolving societal attitudes, heterosexual norms can lead men to make suboptimal consumption decisions and to forgo opportunities to connect with other men, ultimately perpetuating a stigma against intimacy between men.
Can nonnative English accents become barriers to garnering attention in public discourse? The current study examined this question. Analyzing 5,367 TED Talks through computational methodologies such as voice recognition,...Can nonnative English accents become barriers to garnering attention in public discourse? The current study examined this question. Analyzing 5,367 TED Talks through computational methodologies such as voice recognition, natural language processing, and vision models, we investigated the relationship between speakers' accents and online engagement. After adjusting for various control variables with a series of robustness checks, we found a sizeable disparity in public discourse: Speakers with nonnative accents received less engagement than speakers with native accents. To complement our findings, we conducted a controlled social-psychological experiment among English-speaking American adults ( = 462) and a direct replication ( = 916) that corroborated our computational analyses and highlighted stereotyping and processing disfluency as key factors driving reduced engagement in accented speakers. Our research highlights the pervasive impact of accent discrimination in global communication and emphasizes the need for strategies to mitigate its detrimental effects on knowledge exchange across cultural and linguistic boundaries.
Childhood language interventions appear promising for improving children's lives and yielding economic returns. However, few studies have evaluated long-term effects of these interventions. Our study did this using a lar...Childhood language interventions appear promising for improving children's lives and yielding economic returns. However, few studies have evaluated long-term effects of these interventions. Our study did this using a large, cluster-randomized trial of a preschool intervention for Norwegian children aged 4 to 5 years whose vocabulary was more limited than that of their peers. Results showed that effects on expressive language were maintained at the 7-month follow-up when the children were in first grade and that those with the weakest language skills initially had the largest and most persistent effects. However, 4 years after the intervention, the differences between the intervention and control groups were negligible. Thus, although effects from the preschool language intervention lasted into the first year of elementary school, effects eventually faded and were completely absent in fourth grade. Our findings suggest the need for a sustained approach to language and literacy support, focusing on persistent interventions and high-quality adapted instruction.
To navigate complex physical environments, animals keep track of the spatial relations among objects using various reference frames, both body-based (e.g., left/right) and environment-based (e.g., east/west), but how the...To navigate complex physical environments, animals keep track of the spatial relations among objects using various reference frames, both body-based (e.g., left/right) and environment-based (e.g., east/west), but how these spatial representations interact remains unresolved. Whereas neuroscientific findings show habitual integration across reference frames, psycholinguistic accounts suggest humans use one reference frame at a time, as in speech. This article examines whether people spontaneously use two reference frames in the same action. When placing a single object in a two-dimensional array, adult participants ( = 110) routinely used an environment-based frame to determine the object's left-right position while using a body-based frame to determine its front-back position at the same time. Such hybrid responses were prevalent among both Indigenous Tsimane' and educated U.S. participants, suggesting that people across cultures habitually construct compound cognitive maps to represent the multidimensional spatial relations that compose natural settings.