Knowledge that Transforms

Knowing the similarities among others is critical for navigating our social environments and building relationships. However, people can evaluate the similarity among others using two perspectives: other-to-other differences (allocentric similarity) or self-to-other differences (egocentric similarity). Here, we use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test whether the similarity of brain-response patterns when thinking of others and the self is predicted by behavioral models of allocentric and egocentric similarity in the representations of acquainted peers from 20 independent groups of adults (total N = 108; within-subjects design). Results show that both allocentric and egocentric similarity during person representation are reflected in brain-response similarity patterns when thinking of others, but they do so differentially and in nonoverlapping brain systems. These results suggest that the brain independently processes both allocentric and egocentric reference frames to encode trait information about conspecifics that we use to represent person knowledge about others within real-world social networks.

Much of the previous research examining sex differences in human mate preferences has relied exclusively on heterosexual participants. Consequently, prior work overlooks a critical limitation: In heterosexual populations, participant sex and partner sex are perfectly confounded. Here, we tease apart this fundamental problem by separately examining ideal preferences for male and female partners across two studies—one using a large bisexual sample ( n = 442) and another using a sample of both bisexual and heterosexual participants ( n = 380). The results revealed that sex differences in mate preferences were largely driven by the participants’ own sex. However, both males and females set higher standards overall for the traits of male partners. These findings suggest that a person’s mate-preference psychology is shaped by both one’s own sex and the sex of the target being evaluated. More broadly, these results expand our understanding of the proximate psychology underlying human mate preferences.

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.

With more opportunities for diverse interactions, little is known about how social interactions involving people of different socioeconomic status (SES) may unfold. We investigated social-attunement patterns in dyadic interactions involving SES. Unacquainted adults recruited from a community in the United States interacted with similar-or-different-SES partners in the lab ( N = 130 dyads). Attunement was assessed throughout the interaction by examining physiological linkage —how much a person’s physiological change is predicted by another’s physiological change over time. Overall, low-SES participants showed stronger physiological linkage—indicating greater attunement—to partners across SES. Participants also appeared more comfortable when interacting with low-SES partners. There were no SES differences in dominance during the conversation. After the interaction, participants reported liking similar-SES partners more than different-SES partners. These patterns suggest that during interactions, lower-SES individuals are more other-focused than high-SES individuals, and in-group preference prevails. We note limitations in the racial representation of our sample.

Biased media content shapes children's social concepts and identities. We examined gender bias in a large corpus of scripts from 98 children's television programs from the United States spanning the years 1960 to 2018 (6,600 episodes, ~2.7 million sentences, ~16 million words). We focused on agency and communion, the fundamental psychological dimensions underlying gender stereotypes. At the syntactic level, words referring to men or boys (vs. women or girls) appear more often in the agent (vs. patient) role. This syntactic bias remained stable between 1960 and 2018. At the semantic level, words referring to men or boys (vs. women or girls) co-occurred more often with words denoting agency. Words denoting communion showed both stereotypical and counterstereotypical associations. Some semantic gender biases have remained unchanged or have weakened over time; others have grown. These findings suggest that gender stereotypes are built into the core of children's stories. Whether we are closer today to gender equality in children's media depends on where one looks.

The positive relation between mental health and educational attainment is well established, yet the extent to which cognitive abilities influence this gradient or independently predict mental health outcomes remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the association between adolescent cognitive abilities, educational attainment, and adult mental health. Cognitive ability was ascertained in Norwegian military conscript test data ( N = 272,351; mean age 17.8 years; males only), whereas mental disorders were ascertained using the Norwegian register of primary care diagnoses received between the age of 36–40. Higher cognitive abilities were associated with a monotonically decreasing risk of developing all the studied mental disorders except bipolar disorder. The association held even when comparing the cognitive abilities of brothers raised in the same family, attesting that cognitive ability and mental disorders are not associated because both arise from the same family background circumstances. Similarly, individuals with higher educational attainment had fewer mental health disorders. The association between low cognitive abilities and the risk of mental disorders was notably stronger in males with low educational attainment, compared to those with high educational attainment. These individuals may be an underutilized target group for mental-disorder prevention.

Recently, it has been demonstrated that taking a disagreeing perspective increases the accuracy of inner crowds by enhancing estimation diversity. An insightful commentary reanalyzed the data using maximal random structure models and found no increase in accuracy when taking a disagreeing perspective. These findings present a curious challenge for inner-crowd research and hint at the importance of question variability. Here, we present the results of three preregistered experiments (total N = 2,884, with online adult participants from the United States and the United Kingdom) that reconcile these findings by discerning between the ease and difficulty of questions. The results support the notion that taking a disagreeing perspective is beneficial for difficult questions, yet harmful for easier questions. We emphasize that question difficulty is a key factor to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of any intervention designed to improve the accuracy of aggregate estimates through the enhancement of diversity.

What are the risky choices people face in our complex and fast-changing world? This article reports on a series of population surveys in Switzerland ( N = 4,380) that collected those risky choices that are relevant in people’s everyday lives. Using this empirical basis, we developed an inventory consisting of 100 unique real-life choices to address open questions regarding the structure, life domains, and stability of the current ecology of risk. Moreover, a follow-up study ( N = 933) indicated some degree of generalizability of the construct of risk preference to the newly identified real-life choices. The five key insights that emerged from our analyses may be useful for researchers studying decision-making under risk and uncertainty (e.g., what criteria to use when developing novel measurement instruments) and policymaking in applied settings (e.g., addressing how swiftly the risks of modern life change).

Most biased comments people experience are from friends. However, little is known about how people process experiences in which a friend expresses bias and how the relationship might be affected. The current research examines the anticipated relational effects of confronting (vs. not confronting) a friend’s bias, using adult participants in the United States. Asian participants who imagined confronting a White friend’s biased comment (or a stranger’s: see Study 1) anticipated higher friendship or relationship quality compared with those who imagined not having that confrontation. This effect remained regardless of whether bias was directed toward participants’ in-group or toward an out-group (see Study 2). The closer people felt to their friend, the more confronting (vs. not confronting) elicited higher friendship quality. Experimentally testing for mechanism demonstrated that the effect of confronting is driven by greater anticipated understanding (see Study 3). This work reveals that Asian people expect that confronting a friend’s bias will elicit greater understanding and buffer against negative interpersonal effects. Statement of Relevance The majority of biased comments people hear are from friends (Dickter & Newton, 2013), and 40% of Americans report confronting a friend or family member for a biased comment (Horowitz et al., 2019). Yet, how people think about confronting a friend (or not) is unknown. Relationship quality can be improved by mutual understanding (Reis et al., 2017), and confronting can provide an opportunity to express oneself and establish understanding with close others. Further, a proposed starting point for healing racial division is to start a conversation and talk to one’s friends (Song, 2019). Thus, it is essential to understand how racial minorities expect their interracial relationships to be impacted when they confront others about bias. Ultimately, our research helps explain why minority-group members might choose to confront bias from a close friend—namely, that they expect it to be less detrimental for their friendship than to stay silent.

Effective learning involves not only the ability to quickly acquire knowledge and skills, but also the capacity to accurately monitor one’s ongoing learning progress. The present research probed the relation between learning ability and monitoring accuracy. A meta-analysis (Study 1, N = 2,406) counterintuitively found that individuals with superior learning ability exhibited slightly poorer monitoring accuracy (measured as the resolution of judgments of learning). Study 2 reanalyzed the meta-analysis data and observed that expert learners remembered more items they erroneously believed they would not remember, and this underconfidence in expert learners led to a negative association between learning ability and monitoring accuracy. Studies 3 ( N = 102, adults aged 18–23) and 4 ( N = 481, adults aged 18–59) conceptually replicated the findings of Studies 1 and 2 in controlled experiments. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that good learners are also good monitors, suggesting instead that expert learners are actually the ones with monitoring deficits.