Spreading Infection Psychology

We all possess a psychology of infection—specialized ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that keep us safe from the agents of disease and help us recover when we become sick. Although this psychology is two-sided, each side has been
largely studied independently, with models such as the behavioral immune system on one end (infection prevention) and sickness behaviors on the other (infection coping). Each body of work has shown considerable promise in clarifying pathogen-relevant threat management processes. But each also features blind spots featuring relatively little empirical attention. In this talk, I will discuss recent studies and theorizing that help remediate some of these issues, including: the need for more cross-cultural data to explore response consistency and variation, the need to expand post-infection models to social domains, and the possibility of integrating both sides of infection psychology into a system that also considers tradeoffs with other goals in life.

Abstract coming soon!

Rethinking the origins of horse domestication and its impacts on the ancient world

The domestication of the horse is widely understood as one of the most significant events in human history - with horse transport linked to drastic changes in ecology, communication, culture, ceremony, and even the very structure of societies across the ancient world. But how did this transformative relationship between people and horses first emerge? New discoveries from archaeological sciences are overturning long-held assumptions about the timing and process of the first domestication, revealing a process that was far more rapid - and far more disruptive than previously understood.

Linking adaptationist models of emotions to lexical personality constructs

According to the adaptationist paradigm, systematic exploration of individual differences in the functioning of evolved psychological mechanisms can enhance our understanding of lexical personality constructs (e.g., the Big Five, HEXACO). In this talk, I’ll present a series of studies linking adaptationist models of emotions (e.g., pride, shame, guilt, anger, gratitude) to lexical personality traits (e.g., extraversion, agreeableness). In each study, participants (Ns > 200) reported perceptions of emotion-relevant cues (e.g., undervaluation, social value change) across a range of situational vignettes (Ns > 100), forecasted their emotional responses to each situation, and completed a brief personality inventory. Using Bayesian multilevel models, I estimated individual differences in emotion parameters (i.e., input estimation thresholds, emotion activation thresholds, and emotion-input contingencies) and explored correlations with self- reported lexical personality traits. The results offer insight into how variation in the functioning of evolved psychological mechanisms—emotions in this case—relate to lexical personality constructs. These findings contribute to a finer grained, theory-driven understanding of personality.

The Unintended Consequences of Good Intentions: A Study of Hypothetical/Behavioral

Mismatch

A recurring critique of current social psychology is a reliance on hypothetical—rather than actual—behaviors. Indeed, research on helping behaviors is often done with hypothetical scenarios, even though socially desirable response bias is widely expected. Despite this critique, little research has directly assessed the discrepancy between field and hypothetical helping research. Additionally, study of the cognitive processes that underlie helping decisions lags behind other research. To tackle both issues, matched field and hypothetical studies of helping behavior were conducted, varying helping situations across basic evolutionarily-relevant variables: costs of helping, benefit to recipient, and probability of reciprocation. Patterns of helping differed between actual and hypothetical contexts, as well as across helping situations. Helping was not consistently predicted by costs, benefits, or reciprocation likelihood. Subsequent research explores where key differences are between field and hypothetical decisions. I will present data on hypothetical helping scenarios that systematically vary ecological realism of stimuli, likelihood of reciprocal benefits, and metacognitive framing to assess which methodologies more closely elicit responses resembling the “gold standard” of actual behaviors. Taken together, this work provides both outlines of the cognitive landscape for altruistic decisions and methodological guidance on how to elicit realistic responses using hypothetical methods.

Gossip is in the ear of the beholder

Everyone gossips. But are women more likely to be seen as “gossips” for sharing information, and are they judged differently for doing so? We investigated women and men’s (N = 507) lay beliefs about gossip, by randomly assigning them to read short snippets of information across a variety of social contexts (relationships, neighborhood, school, work) and experimentally manipulating the gender of the gossip sharer (woman vs. man). We found substantial differences in people’s perceptions of gossip and those who share it. Overall, people were more likely to label workplace-information shared by a woman (about other women) as gossip, than the same information shared by a man (about other men). However, this did not extend to information related to relationship, neighborhood, or school contexts. Furthermore, people judged women who shared gossip about women to be significantly less moral, less likable, and wanted to befriend her less, than men who shared the exact same information about men. Finally, women participants in our study labeled relationship-, neighborhood-, and work-related conversations as more gossipy than men participants did. Gendered lay beliefs about gossipers appear to impact how moral and likable women are after gossiping, which could differentially impact women’s ability to network and maintain social status. Together, this work highlights the ways in which gender dynamics and people’s lay beliefs influences the social perception of gossip and gossipers.