Knowledge that Transforms

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 tainted-altruism effect has been explained by the use of different counterfactuals for the evaluation of prosocial and selfish actors. Here I propose social rewards protection theory , 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 N = 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.

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.

Understanding variation in cognitive abilities is critical to understanding both the evolution and development of cognition. In this study, we examined the stability, structure, and predictability of individual differences in cognitive abilities in great apes across a broad range of domains, including social cognition, reasoning about quantities, executive function, and inferential reasoning. We administered six tasks to 48 individuals from four species, spanning 10 sessions over 1.5 years. Task performance was most strongly predicted by stable, individual-specific characteristics rather than transient or group-level variables. Using additional data from the same individuals in other tasks, we found substantial positive correlations between nonsocial tasks. In contrast, tasks measuring social cognition were not correlated either with each other or with nonsocial measures. Future studies should work toward mechanistic models of great apes' cognitive processes to build an understanding of the evolution of cognition based on process-level commonalities across species.

People overaccept information that supports their identity and underaccept information that opposes their identity—a phenomenon known as partisan bias . 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 ( N total = 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.

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 ( N = 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.

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 ( domain generality ) or whether it is computed independently in the context of each task ( domain specificity ). 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 ( N = 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.

In recent years, several scholars have argued that the influence of deliberate practice on expertise has been overstated. Others have contended that these critiques conflate deliberate practice with less effective forms of training. We analyzed a large, longitudinal cohort of Chess.com players ( N = 44,213) using objective, time-stamped measures of both practice activity and performance. We tested whether deliberate practice-aligned activities predict greater rating improvement than playing games. Multilevel models revealed that, despite more than 90% of player time being spent on games, deliberate practice was substantially more efficient for learning. Although not all deliberate practice-aligned activities were equally effective, the category as a whole was associated with a 3.61× advantage in learning efficiency relative to gameplay ( p s < .001). These findings offer rare real-world evidence in a long-standing theoretical debate about learning efficiency. How individuals train, not just how much, fundamentally shapes the trajectory of skill development.

Advances in AI have enabled chatbots to provide warm, personalized support. Yet little is known about the long-term consequences of AI companionship. Across a 12-month longitudinal study with more than 2,000 adults from four Western countries, we examined the bidirectional relationships between social chatbot use and loneliness.We found evidence that increased social chatbot use predicted increased loneliness, using a single-item measure of emotional isolation. When we used a broader and more stable measure of social connection, we found evidence that feeling less socially connected predicted subsequent increases in social chatbot use; however, chatbot use did not significantly predict decreases in social connection. Taken together, these findings provide initial evidence that being lonely may spur people to seek companionship through chatbots but that such use may, over time, exacerbate feelings of loneliness. We urge caution, however, in drawing strong conclusions given the exploratory nature of our analyses.

Accountability is a commonly recommended intervention to reduce discrimination. However, there have been no field experiments testing whether it reduces discrimination in workplaces. Here we present preregistered analyses of a field experiment conducted at a company ( n = 3,266 managers rating 17,149 employees) testing whether an accountability intervention reduces performance-evaluation gaps between White and racial-minority employees. We did not find evidence that the accountability intervention closes evaluation gaps. These null effects are likely not driven by a lack of statistical power or by inattentive managers, nor is the manipulation ineffective in all contexts—a supplemental online experiment shows that similar treatment language does change decision-making, underscoring a disconnect between findings in hypothetical settings versus real organizations. These results highlight the need for additional field experiments and theorizing to better understand when and why accountability interventions, as they may typically be implemented in organizations, improve diversity-related outcomes.

= 604, children aged 4-9 years of age and 582 adults) show that no amount of significance is too small to matter, even for small actions from early in life. Children and adults strongly preferred artistic activities with minimal significance (i.e., where their work would be saved) over activities with no lasting existence. This preference held for both repetitive and one-time tasks and was specific to creating artwork, not just observing it. Anticipating even minimal significance motivated participants to engage in productive rather than effortless activities. When significance is absent, focusing on enjoying the process partially, but not fully, compensates for motivation. These findings illuminate the scope and sensitivity of significance, revealing it to be not a luxury concern but an essential, early-emerging motivational force in an increasingly fast-paced, transient world.