The 10 most-cited articles in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2022

We present a three-dimensional taxonomy of achievement emotions that considers valence, arousal, and object focus as core features of these emotions. By distinguishing between positive and negative emotions (valence), activating and deactivating emotions (arousal), and activity emotions, prospective outcome emotions, and retrospective outcome emotions (object focus), the taxonomy has a 2 × 2 × 3 structure representing 12 groups of achievement emotions. In four studies across different countries (N = 330, 235, 323, and 269 participants in Canada, the United States, Germany, and the U.K., respectively), we investigated the empirical robustness of the taxonomy in educational (Studies 1-3) and work settings (Study 4). An expanded version of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire was used to assess 12 key emotions representing the taxonomy. Consistently across the four studies, findings from multilevel facet analysis and structural equation modeling documented the importance of the three dimensions for explaining achievement emotions. In addition, based on hypotheses about relations with…

Attachment theory provides a framework for understanding the correlations among interpersonal relationships, stress, and health. Moreover, adult attachment is an important predictor of mental health. However, there is a lack of systematic reviews that simultaneously examine the associations between adult attachment and both positive and negative indicators of mental health. Consequently, we meta-analyzed 224 studies examining the associations between adult attachment and mental health, using robust variance estimation with random effects. The results (k = 245 samples, N = 79,722) showed that higher levels of attachment anxiety and avoidance were positively correlated with negative affect (e.g., depression, anxiety, loneliness) and they were negatively correlated with positive affect (e.g., life satisfaction, self-esteem). More specifically, there were moderate associations between attachment avoidance and negative mental health (r = .28) and positive mental health (r = -.24). Likewise, there were moderate associations between attachment anxiety and negative mental health (r = .42)…

= 6,309), we address three key questions about the nature, structure, assessment, and outcomes of SEB skills. First, how can SEB skills be defined and distinguished from other kinds of psychological constructs, such as personality traits? We propose that SEB skills represent how someone is capable of thinking, feeling, and behaving when the situation calls for it, whereas traits represent how someone tends to think, feel, and behave averaged across situations. Second, how can specific SEB skills be organized within broader domains? We find that many skill facets can be organized within five major domains representing Social Engagement, Cooperation, Self-Management, Emotional Resilience, and Innovation Skills. Third, how should SEB skills be measured? We develop and validate the Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI) to measure individuals' capacity to enact specific behaviors representing 32 skill facets. We then use the BESSI to investigate the nomological network of SEB skills. We show that both skill domains and facets converge in conceptually meaningful ways…

The Big Five is often represented as an effective taxonomy of psychological traits, yet little research has empirically examined whether stand-alone assessments of psychological traits can be located within the Big Five framework. Meanwhile, construct proliferation has created difficulty navigating the resulting landscape. In the present research, we developed criteria for assessing whether the Big Five provides a comprehensive organizing framework for psychological trait scales, and evaluated this question across three samples (Total N = 1,039). Study 1 revealed that 83% of an author-identified collection of scales (e.g., Self-Esteem, Grit, etc.) were as related to the Big Five as at least 4 of 30 Big Five facets and Study 2 found that 71% of scales selected based on citation counts passed the same criterion. Several scales had strikingly large links at the Big Five facet level, registering correlations with individual Big Five facets exceeding 0.9. We conclude that the Big Five can indeed serve as an organizing framework for a sizable majority of stand-alone psychological trait…

in their minds-identity-specific schemas for categorizing others-and that characteristics of the perceiver and the social context determine which one of these lenses will be used to organize social perception. Perceivers who are using the lens of race, for example, are expected to attend to targets' racial identities so strongly that they barely attend, in these moments, to targets' other identities (e.g., their sexual orientations). Across six experiments, we show (a) that perceivers tend to use just one lens at a time when thinking about others, (b) that the lenses perceivers use can be singular and simplistic (e.g., the lens of gender by itself) or intersectional and complex (e.g., a race-by-gender lens, specifically), and (c) that different lenses can prescribe categorically distinct sets of stereotypes that perceivers use as frameworks for thinking about others. This lens-based account can resolve apparent contradictions in the literature on intersectional stereotyping, and it can likewise be used to generate novel hypotheses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights…

Many organizations offer justifications for why diversity matters, that is, organizational diversity cases. We investigated their content, prevalence, and consequences for underrepresented groups. We identified the business case, an instrumental rhetoric claiming that diversity is valuable for organizational performance, and the fairness case, a noninstrumental rhetoric justifying diversity as the right thing to do. Using an algorithmic classification, Study 1 (N = 410) found that the business case is far more prevalent than the fairness case among the Fortune 500. Extending theories of social identity threat, we next predicted that the business case (vs. fairness case, or control) undermines underrepresented groups' anticipated sense of belonging to, and thus interest in joining organizations-an effect driven by social identity threat. Study 2 (N = 151) found that LGBTQ+ professionals randomly assigned to read an organization's business (vs. fairness) case anticipated lower belonging, and in turn, less attraction to said organization. Study 3 (N = 371) conceptually replicated this…

= .41); (b) inclusion of multi-informant ratings substantially enhanced the ability of social-emotional skills in predicting outcome variables, with parent- and self-rated skills playing important, unique roles; (c) by modeling skills at the facet level rather than at the domain level, we identified the key skills for different outcomes and found significant variation in facets' predictive utility even within the same domain; and (d) although the older cohort showed lower levels of most social-emotional skills (9/15), there were only minor changes in the interrater agreement and predictive utility on outcomes. Overall, self-control, trust, optimism, and energy were found among the four most important skills for academic and life success. We further identified the unique contribution of each skill for specific outcomes, pointing the way to effective and precise interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Decades of studies identify personality traits as prospectively associated with life outcomes. However, previous investigations of personality characteristic-outcome associations have not taken a principled approach to covariate use or other sampling strategies to ensure the robustness of personality-outcome associations. The result is that it is unclear (a) whether personality characteristics are associated with important outcomes after accounting for a range of background variables, (b) for whom and when personality-outcome associations hold, and (c) that background variables are most important to account for. The present study examines the robustness and boundary conditions of personality-outcome associations using prospective Big Five associations with 14 health, social, education/work, and societal outcomes across eight different person- and study-level moderators using individual participant data from 171,395 individuals across 10 longitudinal panel studies in a mega-analytic framework. Robustness and boundary conditions were systematically tested using two approaches:…

= 0.23 [0.17, 0.30]. Meta-analytic conclusions about the associations between goal types and wellness are important because they inform how individuals could shape aspirations to support their own happiness and how groups and institutions can frame goals such that their pursuit is for the common good. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

= 1,470) show the utility of spontaneous stereotypes, compared to traditional, prompted, scale-based stereotypes. Using natural language processing text analyses, Study 1 shows the most common spontaneous stereotype dimensions for salient social groups. Our results confirm existing stereotype models' dimensions, while uncovering a significant prevalence of dimensions that these models do not cover, such as Health, Appearance, and Deviance. The SSCM also characterizes the valence, direction, and accessibility of reported dimensions (e.g., Ability stereotypes are mostly positive, but Morality stereotypes are mostly negative; Sociability stereotypes are provided later than Ability stereotypes in a sequence of open-ended responses). Studies 2 and 3 check the robustness of these findings by: using a larger sample of social groups, varying time pressure, and diversifying analytical strategies. Study 3 also establishes the value of spontaneous stereotypes: compared to scales alone, open-ended measures improve predictions of attitudes toward social groups. Improvement in attitude prediction…