Kimberly Rios

Attitude Certainty and Conflict Style Divergent Effects of Correctness and Clarity

Little research has examined the properties of people’s attitudes that predict how they will respond to conflict with others whose opinions differ. We propose that one aspect of attitude certainty—attitude correctness, or the perception that one’s attitude is the “right” attitude to have—will predict more competitive conflict styles. This hypothesis was tested across five data sets comprising four studies. In Studies 1a and 1b, perceptions of attitude correctness (but not another form of attitude certainty, attitude clarity) predicted participants’ tendencies to send competitive messages to an ostensible partner who held the opposite opinion. In Studies 2 to 4, manipulations of attitude correctness, but not attitude clarity (Study 3), also increased competitiveness in conflict, and perceived correctness mediated the effect of the correctness manipulation on conflict style (Study 4). The present research has implications for both the predictors of conflict style and the consequences of different forms of attitude certainty.

Experimental Evidence for Minorities’ Hesitancy in Reporting Their Opinions: The Roles of Optimal Distinctiveness Needs and Normative Influence

Four experiments provided evidence for when and why opinion minorities take more time than opinion majorities to report their opinions. In Study 1, participants who wrote about feeling overly different from—but not overly similar to—others were slower to report their opinions after being led to believe that they held a minority than majority opinion. In Studies 2 and 3, minority opinion holders’ hesitancy was attenuated among participants with a high dispositional need for uniqueness, and this effect was mediated by low need for uniqueness individuals’ beliefs that their minority opinions were less normative than their majority opinions (Study 3). In Study 4, a subtle need to belong manipulation amplified the differences in response times between opinion minorities and majorities. Together, these studies show that minorities’ hesitancy in reporting their opinions depends on their motives to belong versus be unique and stems from normative influence processes.

Negative Stereotypes Cause Christians to Underperform in and Disidentify With Science

Despite Christians being a religious majority in the United States, relatively few pursue higher education and careers in science. Our studies show that stereotypes about Christians being less competent in science than other groups are recognized by both Christians and non-Christians and are openly endorsed by non-Christians (Study 1). Our studies further demonstrate that when these stereotypes become salient, Christians are less interested in and identified with science (Study 2) and underperform on science-relevant tasks (Studies 3–5), compared to non-Christians. Even subtle contextual cues that bear more or less relevance to science are sufficient to compromise Christians’ scientific task performance, particularly among the highly religious (Study 5). When these stereotypes are explicitly removed, however, performance differences between Christians and non-Christians disappear. These results suggest that Christians’ awareness of the negative societal stereotypes about their group’s scientific competence may be partially responsible for the underperformance and underrepresentation of Christians in scientific fields.

A (Creative) Portrait of the Uncertain Individual Self-Uncertainty and Individualism Enhance Creative Generation

Building on findings that self-uncertainty motivates attempts to restore certainty about the self, particularly in ways that highlight one’s distinctiveness from others, we show that self-uncertainty, relative to uncertainty in general, increases creative generation among individualists. In Studies 1 to 3, high (but not low) individualists performed better on a creative generation task after being primed with self-uncertainty as opposed to general uncertainty. In Study 4, this effect emerged only among those who were told that the task measured creative as opposed to analytical thinking, suggesting that the positive effects of self-uncertainty on performance are specific to tasks that bolster perceptions of uniqueness. In Study 5, self-uncertain individualists experienced a restoration of self-clarity after being induced to think about themselves as more (vs. less) creative. Implications for compensatory responses to self-uncertainty and factors that influence creativity are discussed.

Order of actions mitigates hypocrisy judgments for ingroup more than outgroup members

Compared to the conventional order of hypocritical actions—saying one thing and then doing another—merely reversing the order of these actions can mitigate whether an individual is judged to be a hypocrite (Barden, Rucker, & Petty, 2005). The present research examines how factors extraneous to a target’s own actions—specifically, group membership—influence hypocrisy judgments. Three experiments provided consistent evidence that reversing the order of statement and behavior mitigated hypocrisy judgments to a greater extent when observers judged ingroup targets compared to outgroup targets. This pattern was observed across two distinct groups (i.e., gender and political party). In addition, mediational evidence suggested that the greater mitigation for ingroup targets stemmed from the observer’s greater tendency to make attributions that ingroup targets had genuinely changed for the better.

How Do U.S. Christians and Atheists Stereotype One Another’s Moral Values?

ABSTRACT Moral conflict between Christians and atheists is becoming increasingly heated amidst the U.S. “culture wars,” yet research has been mostly silent regarding how these groups stereotype one another’s moral values and beliefs. We used moral foundations theory to better understand the nature of such stereotypes. In Study 1, U.S. Christian and atheist participants completed measures of moral values from their own perspective as well as the perspectives of typical atheists and typical Christians. Whereas atheists believed their ingroup endorsed fairness/justice values more than Christians, Christians believed their ingroup endorsed all moral values more than atheists. Moreover, both groups held (often extremely) inaccurate stereotypes about the outgroup’s values. In Study 2, participants wrote explicitly about outgroup morality. Atheists typically described Christians more negatively than Christians described atheists, regardless of the moral foundation of concern. Also, Christians’ negative impressions drew primarily from the Authority foundation, and both groups drew heavily from the Care foundation in both their positive and negative depictions. Implications for addressing the growing conflict between Christians and atheists in the United States are discussed.

Feeling High but Playing Low Power, Need to Belong, and Submissive Behavior

Past research has demonstrated a causal relationship between power and dominant behavior, motivated in part by the desire to maintain the social distinctiveness created by one’s position of power. In this article, we test the novel idea that some individuals respond to high-power roles by displaying not dominance but instead submissiveness. We theorize that high-power individuals who are also high in the need to belong experience the social distinctiveness associated with power as threatening, rather than as an arrangement to protect and maintain. We predict that such individuals will counter their feelings of threat with submissive behaviors to downplay their power and thereby reduce their distinctiveness. We found support for this hypothesis across three studies using different operationalizations of power, need to belong, and submissiveness. Furthermore, Study 3 illustrated the mediating role of fear of (positive) attention in the relationship between power, need to belong, and submissive behavior.

Wanting to Be Different Predicts Nonmotivated Change: Actual-Desired Self-Discrepancies and Susceptibility to Subtle Change Inductions.

Actual–desired discrepancies in people’s self-concepts represent structural incongruities in their self-representations that can lead people to experience subjective conflict. Theory and research suggest that structural incongruities predict susceptibility to subtle influences like priming and conditioning. Although typically examined for their motivational properties, we hypothesized that because self-discrepancies represent structural incongruities in people’s self-concepts, they should also predict susceptibility to subtle influences on people’s active self-views. Across three studies, we found that subtle change inductions (self-evaluative conditioning and priming) exerted greater impact on active self-perceptions and behavior as actual–desired self-discrepancies increased in magnitude. Exploratory analyses suggested that these changes occurred regardless of the compatibility of the change induction with individuals’ desired self-views.

Judging the actions of “whistle-blowers” versus “leakers”: Labels influence perceptions of dissenters who expose group misconduct

Although moral and collective concerns have been found to predict expressions of dissent, little research has examined conditions under which dissenters are perceived as acting out of such concerns. Three studies tested whether judgments of dissenters who expose group misconduct can depend on subtle labeling differences. In Study 1, participants rated their actions as more morally based, and themselves as more likely to express dissent, after reading a scenario in which they were labeled a “whistle-blower” (vs. “leaker”). In Studies 2–3, participants who read a passage describing an employee of an organization (Study 2) or a well-known individual (Edward Snowden, Study 3) as a “whistle-blower,” relative to “leaker,” viewed these individuals as more morally and collectively concerned, which in turn mediated perceived deservingness of punishment. Implications for the factors that lead dissenters to be judged positively, for psychological effects of labels, and for generalizability across contexts are discussed.

Self-Uncertainty and the Influence of Alternative Goals on Self-Regulation

The current research examines factors that facilitate or undermine goal pursuit. Past research indicates that attempts to reduce self-uncertainty can result in increased goal motivation. We explore a critical boundary condition of this effect—the presence of alternative goals. Though self-regulatory processes usually keep interest in alternative goals in check, uncertainty reduction may undermine these self-regulatory efforts by (a) reducing conflict monitoring and (b) increasing valuation of alternative goals. As such, reminders of alternative goals will draw effort away from focal goals for self-uncertain (but not self-certain) participants. Across four studies and eight supplemental studies, using different focal goals (e.g., academic achievement, healthy eating) and alternative goals (e.g., social/emotional goals, attractiveness, indulgence), we found that alternative goal salience does not negatively influence goal-directed behavior among participants primed with self-certainty, but that reminders of alternative goals undermine goal pursuit among participants primed with self-uncertainty.