Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping creative industries, raising questions about how people evaluate AI-generated work. Building on extant work, we synthesize what we term the mind-superiority hypothesis, which holds that entities perceived as possessing a "mind" receive more favorable evaluations, particularly in creative domains. We apply this framework to the novel context of AI-generated creative work. We first explore whether AI-generated creative work is judged less favorably than human-created work because generative AI is seen as having lower mental capabilities. We then examine whether mentalistic mindset prompts-instructions encouraging observers to interpret an entity in terms of mental activities such as thinking and feeling-can heighten perceived mental capabilities and, in turn, improve evaluations. We also identify reasoning disclosure as a practical intervention that enhances mind perception and boosts evaluations of AI's creative output. Across seven studies (N = 2,333), the results provide converging evidence supporting the mind-superiority hypothesis and provide a theoretically grounded account of why AI-generated creative work is often evaluated less favorably-and how such evaluations can be improved. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Many real-world, safety-critical domains require searching for targets in complex scenes, like a pilot scanning a runway for hazards. Augmented reality (AR) displays show promise for faster, more accurate attention guidance during visual search, yet the effectiveness of cue properties and their failure modes remains underexplored. The current experiments simulate AR overlays on a wide-field-of-view (FOV) display to examine how cue properties affect search performance under perfect or imperfect automation. Across both studies, cues improved search performance relative to an unaided search. Spatial information outperformed identity information, and local cues outperformed global cues. Dual cues outperformed single cues, showing a greater benefit when targets were outside the immediate FOV. Imperfect automation degraded performance and produced an automation bias: Errors were higher when automation was incorrect than with a no-cue baseline (no automation). Miss-prone automation (Experiment 2) yielded larger response time costs than false-alarm-prone automation (Experiment 1), whereas costs to accuracy were comparable. Under miss-prone automation, dual cues slightly amplified the automation bias relative to single cues. These findings have implications for designing automated cueing aids, particularly in large search environments, where spatial precision and automation errors should be considered carefully. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Prospective donors to charitable organizations must balance prosocial motives against self-interested financial considerations. Two laboratory experiments tracked mouse cursor trajectories during online donation decisions to dynamically examine how these conflicting motives shape choices. Cursor movements revealed the timing at which prosocial versus self-interested attributes influenced decision making; earlier consideration of prosocial attributes was associated with higher donation rates, suggesting prosociality can operate rapidly. Cursor-derived measures of decision conflict also significantly predicted donation outcomes in ways that distinguished distinct donor types: Some participants exhibited consistently higher (lower) conflict in cursor trajectories when opting not to donate, even after controlling for stated willingness to donate, and this predicted greater (less) generosity in unrelated donation contexts. Additionally, cursor movement data better predicted out-of-sample donation decisions compared to response times or traditional behavioral measures and retained predictive strength even after controlling for these variables. These results underscore the value of cursor-tracking methodologies in providing richer theoretical insights and predictive accuracy regarding donor behavior. Specifically, dynamic cursor metrics offer charitable giving researchers a nuanced approach to understanding how donors process and resolve trade-offs between self-interested and prosocial motivations during donation solicitations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Prospective memory (PM) deficits are common in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and are often linked to impairments in executive control. Strengthening encoding during intention formation may therefore serve as a compensatory strategy. The present study examined whether episodic future thinking (EFT) with different instructional foci (process-focused vs. outcome-focused) enhances the execution of everyday self-assigned PM intentions in adults with and without ADHD, relative to a standard encoding condition. A total of 196 adults (98 ADHD, 98 controls) were recruited in Autumn 2025 and randomly assigned to one of three encoding conditions, yielding six experimental groups (outcome-focused: n = 34 per group; process-focused: n = 32 per group; standard: n = 32 per group). PM performance was assessed using a modified version of the diary task across three online sessions. Overall, individuals with ADHD showed lower everyday PM performance. Across groups, EFT-based encoding improved PM performance relative to standard encoding. Contrary to predictions, outcome-focused EFT led to the strongest PM enhancement, while process-focused EFT yielded moderate benefits only for adults with ADHD. These findings provide first evidence that manipulating EFT focus during intention formation can enhance everyday PM in adults with ADHD, underscoring EFT as a practical strategy for improving daily functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Nutri-Score front-of-package labels are designed to guide consumers toward healthier food choices, yet evidence on their effectiveness is mixed. We examined when Nutri-Score shifts purchasing choices and whether its impact depends on making health goals salient at the moment of choice and whether Nutri-Score ratings confirm versus contradict consumers' preexisting beliefs about which product is healthier. In a randomized online experiment with Italian adults (N = 792), participants made purchase choices across 30 pairs of familiar grocery products. Nutri-Score presence (present vs. absent) and a brief health-goal prompt ("Which product is healthier?"; present vs. absent) were manipulated between participants. We also categorized product pairs based on whether Nutri-Score ratings aligned with participants' prelabel healthiness judgments. Overall, displaying Nutri-Score increased the selection of the higher Nutri-Score option. This shift was largest when the label confirmed prior beliefs and the health-goal prime was present. When Nutri-Score contradicted prior beliefs, the label shifted choices even without the prime. These findings suggest that Nutri-Score effectiveness depends on goal salience and on whether the label provides expectation-consistent versus expectation-inconsistent information; in some cases, unexpectedly favorable ratings on tempting products may also be experienced as more permissible, a possibility that policymakers should consider. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
As organizations confront the global imperative of ecological transition, the psychological gap between organizational green policies and voluntary individual green behavior remains a major obstacle to sustainable development. Employee green behavior is central to bridging this gap. Grounded in the ability-motivation-opportunity framework, this study integrates partial least squares structural equation modeling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine how antecedent conditions, including green self-efficacy, personal norms, green leadership, and organizational green supportive atmosphere, are jointly associated with employee green behavior. The results indicate that each of these variables is positively associated with employee green behavior. The configurational analysis identified three patterns associated with high employee green behavior: (a) ability-opportunity synergy, with green self-efficacy and organizational green supportive atmosphere as core conditions; (b) motivation-opportunity synergy, linking personal norms, green leadership, and organizational green supportive atmosphere; and (c) comprehensive synergy involving green self-efficacy, personal norms, and organizational green supportive atmosphere. This study extends the ability-motivation-opportunity framework in the context of employee green behavior and provides practical implications for organizations seeking to support workplace sustainability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
When people reflect on past interpersonal conflicts (e.g., being attacked, criticized, or excluded), they often replay events in their minds, recalling what actually happened and imagining how things could have gone differently, thus engaging in counterfactual thinking. We investigated the types of counterfactuals they generate and whether counterfactual thinking influences their willingness to forgive. Results from Study 1 showed that, when recalling a past offense, victims generated more additive ("If only X had") than subtractive ("If only X had not") counterfactuals. Study 2 found that additive (vs. subtractive) counterfactuals focused on the perpetrator were associated with greater (vs. lesser) willingness to take the perpetrator's perspective and to forgive. Study 3 provided further evidence supporting the effects of additive (vs. subtractive) counterfactuals when the counterfactuals were focused on the victim. No direct evidence of moderation by offense severity or temporal distance was found (Studies 2 and 3), while the effects of victim-focused counterfactuals were moderated by responsibility attribution to the perpetrator or the victim (Study 3). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Forgetting is often cited to explain or excuse failures to meet obligations and duties. But does it actually reduce blame? Across seven preregistered experiments (total N = 6,181), we test when and why forgetting mitigates or exacerbates blame. We find that under ordinary circumstances, appeals to forgetting backfire: Individuals who attribute failures to forgetting are judged as more blameworthy than they are otherwise. People tend to believe that failures attributed to forgetting could have and should have been prevented, and these preventability judgments mediate the effect of forgetting on heightened blame judgments. These heightened blame attributions, in turn, have consequences for compensatory justice, highlighting broader consequences. However, forgetting reduces blame when failures appear less preventable, specifically when individuals exert effort to remember or suffer from cognitive impairments that make remembering more difficult. These findings refine moral psychological theories of blame by showing how judgments of preventability mediate the moral status of cognitive lapses, with broad implications for law, policy, and organizational behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
In three studies, we tested whether icon arrays-which are a popular method of presenting risk information-can reduce predecisional information distortion that arises when early emerging preferences bias the evaluation of subsequently shown information. In Study 1, using traditional measures of information distortion, we found that risk-of-death information about two potential treatment options that was presented via icon arrays was distorted in favor of participants' leading alternative. The magnitude of distortion was similar to the level of distortion for other treatment information in the treatment scenario. Study 2 directly tested whether the presence versus absence of icon arrays when presenting risk information had any impact on levels of information distortion, this time using a dependent measure that targeted people's intuitive perceptions of risk. We found that the extent to which a 6% risk of death seemed riskier than a 3% risk of death was greater when the former risk was from a treatment option that was relatively undesired. This distortion was not significantly reduced by the presence of icon arrays. We replicated this pattern of results in a third study. These findings highlight the need for developing new tools and methods for presenting risk/likelihood information that can protect against the influence of predecisional information distortion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Existing research explains the widespread belief that unhealthy food is tastier than healthy food by how food is portrayed in the media and social networks and by the notion that food cannot serve two purposes (health and pleasure) at the same time. However, these explanations cannot explain why people do not change this belief despite the increasingly large variety of healthy and tasty food options. We argue that it is the abundance of tasty foods in the environment, combined with people's motivation to eat palatable foods, that prevents individuals from changing their beliefs. In three online studies and one taste experiment (total N = 976), we show that individuals' food choices in reward-rich environments with many tasty foods, but not in reward-poor environments with few tasty foods, led to a consolidation of initial beliefs, even when there was no relationship between food healthiness and taste or a relationship that contradicted their beliefs in the experimental food environment. Our findings suggest that a basic hedonic sampling mechanism contributes to the persistence of food beliefs, such as the belief that unhealthy food tastes better, and should be considered when trying to change unhealthy diets. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
As the demand for "green" products grows, companies are utilizing green advertising to appeal to consumers. Unfortunately, this trend has been accompanied by a rise in the phenomenon of greenwashing, which has led to skepticism and distrust among green consumers. Drawing on construal-level theory, this study explores features of green messages that affect motivated resistance to persuasion, greenwashing perceptions, and purchase intentions. We crafted fictitious advertisements varying in psychological distance of consequences (proximal vs. distal outcomes) of consequences and in verb modality (definite vs. probable language). Using an experimental survey (N = 1,617), we found that messages that contained two low-construal features (psychological distance of consequences: proximal, and verb modality: definite) produced the most resistance to persuasion. Motivated resistance to persuasion was found to increase perceptions of greenwashing, while perceptions of greenwashing were found to reduce purchase intentions. The experiment additionally found that the combination of proximal consequences and definite language reduced purchase intentions through serial mechanisms of increased motivated resistance to persuasion and perceptions of greenwashing. These findings enrich the growing understanding of green messaging and carry both practical and theoretical implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Information seeking as a behavioral manifestation of curiosity has often been captured with experimental tasks that explicitly prompt information seeking instead of capturing participants' self-initiated exploratory behaviors. This online study (N = 799 English-speaking adults, mostly from the United Kingdom) was conducted in 2023 and combined aspects of experimental curiosity research with more naturalistic exploration methods by introducing a novel experimental setup. Participants freely explored a hypertext on a historical topic, while their self-directed information seeking (i.e., clicks on hyperlinks and reading time) was captured with log data. Participants then completed a knowledge test in which they also reported their confidence in their answers and their curiosity about learning the correct answers. We found that simply choosing to seek additional information (clicking on a hyperlink) did not predict curiosity ratings, whereas the extent of engagement (reading time) did. Moreover, trait curiosity moderated the relationship between confidence and state curiosity, with highly trait-curious individuals maintaining higher state curiosity under low confidence, unlike those with low trait curiosity. This study presents a promising way to assess curiosity in a controlled experimental task resembling real-world learning situations and provides a comprehensive perspective on the dynamic ways in which curiosity is sparked and satisfied. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
This research investigates the impact of competing job offers on recruiters' hiring inclination toward the best available candidate. Across five studies, we explored how knowledge of such offers influences recruiters' decision making and showed that awareness of competing offers significantly sways hiring intentions. Our findings revealed that the mere presence of competing offers, rather than their quantity, can make recruiters' attitudes more favorable toward the candidate and increase hiring inclination. This pattern diverges somewhat from research and theory on social impact that finds additional, though decreasing, impact of additional others on social judgment. One reason for this, we suggest, is that competing offers create two opposing influences: Whereas additional offers increase favorability toward the candidate, they also decrease the likelihood that the candidate will accept the offer. Supporting this possibility, when the two mechanisms are no longer conflicting-because instead of offers, it is additional rejections of the candidate-then different numbers of rejections by others do have an impact (of making one less likely to make an offer). Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Critical thinking classes are ubiquitous in U.S. college curricula. One of their aims is to teach good reasoning skills. To date, there is little systematic evidence that they do this. We report the results of a field experiment (N = 397) that compared undergraduate critical thinking classes taught in a philosophy department to other undergraduate philosophy classes. The results suggest that an appropriately designed critical thinking class can dramatically reduce four common biases in judgment and decision making: honoring sunk costs, inferring causation from correlation, ignoring regression to the mean, and overlooking opportunity costs. The size of the debiasing effects was substantial (Cohen's d > 0.80) and persisted at least 16 months after the class ended. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Various preidentification instructions have been proposed to reduce eyewitness misidentifications by promoting conservative responding. According to the classic signal detection model, such instructions should shift decision criteria without affecting discriminability-the ability to distinguish innocent from guilty suspects. Yet, in prior research, while two types of instructions did make participants respond more conservatively, one type of instruction decreased discriminability and another increased discriminability. Across four experiments-three conducted online and one in the field-we tested the effects of different instructional methods on eyewitness responding in both lineup and showup procedures. We found that while certain instructions consistently induced more conservative responding, they sometimes decreased and never increased discriminability. We attribute this pattern to instructional variance: participants likely interpreted and complied with the instructions to varying degrees, introducing noise that lowered discriminability. Notably, identifications made with high confidence were associated with much more conservative responding than any instruction alone, suggesting that conservative responding is best achieved by collecting confidence rather than by instructing eyewitnesses to respond conservatively. Finally, the confidence-accuracy relationship was stronger in our field showup using live actors than in the corresponding online version, underscoring the need for more research in the field to better understand eyewitness identification performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Classical research on motivated reasoning finds that prior beliefs can influence how people use their reasoning ability in a directional manner, making them more likely to arrive at belief-consistent conclusions. Recent research has tested the related hypothesis of selective application of reasoning ability: Do those with greater reasoning ability selectively apply their greater ability to form interpretations of evidence that are more biased by their prior beliefs, compared to those with less ability? This research has found mixed results. We report the results of two preregistered experiments using a paradigm designed to directly test for the selective application of reasoning ability. We ask whether individuals with greater ability to evaluate scientific evidence quality selectively apply that ability when communicating about flawed evidence, depending upon whether the evidence is consistent or inconsistent with their beliefs. Across both experiments, we fail to find evidence for selective application of reasoning ability: higher ability participants' communications are generally biased by their prior beliefs, but no more biased than those of low-ability participants. Overall, high-ability participants generate communications that are generally more accurate and transparent than those of low-ability participants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Belief updating in response to social feedback is essential for adaptive decision making but may be sensitive to sleep deprivation. Across two preregistered within-subjects studies (N = 36, conducted in 2023, and N = 49, conducted in 2024), we examined how 24 hr of total sleep deprivation affects belief change and confidence updating after agreeing or disagreeing with peer feedback. Sleep deprivation consistently increased belief change, regardless of feedback type, and disrupted the stabilizing role of initial confidence. High-confidence beliefs, typically more resistant to revision, were more often changed when participants were sleep deprived. To examine confidence dynamics, Study 2 added a no-change block, where participants could adjust confidence, but not change beliefs. Here, sleep-deprived participants showed larger confidence drops, especially at high initial confidence. Moreover, stronger confidence drops in the no-change block predicted more frequent belief change when change was allowed. In sleep-deprived states, higher initial confidence no longer protected against strong confidence updating in response to peer feedback. Rather than simply increasing suggestibility, sleep deprivation undermines confidence-based mechanisms that normally regulate belief change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Autonomous wayfinding involves reading (digital) maps and memorizing route information in executable ways. The present study aimed to understand factors influencing navigational map-based route learning. Effects of a map reading instruction and the role of individual differences in perspective taking ability and visuospatial working memory capacity were investigated, considering interactions between effects of instruction and individual differences. In addition, gaze patterns were recorded to gain insights into the map reading process. In 2023, N = 106 university students learned a predefined route from a digital map while their gaze patterns were recorded. Then, they navigated the route from memory in a virtual environment, while navigation errors were measured as an indication of route memory. A pretest-posttest design was deployed, and between pretest and posttest, participants in the instruction condition received specific map reading instructions, whereas participants in the control condition did not. Perspective taking ability and visuospatial working memory capacity predicted navigation performance. Although instructions did not significantly improve overall navigation performance, they had a small effect to reduce the impact of spatial abilities (aptitude-treatment interaction). In addition, a novel time-based gaze pattern analysis revealed that better performance was associated with a consistent reading strategy with fixations progressing continuously along the route toward the destination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
We show that merely knowing that experts can predict future events with higher (vs. lower) accuracy can bias consumers' expectations about the outcomes of such events. We focus our investigation on predictions of assets' value and show that the mere belief that experts can predict the future value of a stock with higher (vs. lower) accuracy leads people to form unfounded optimistic expectations about the future value of the stock and invest more in that stock, even if experts' predictions remain undisclosed. Drawing on the concept of the community of knowledge, we suggest that this bias originates from a sense of empowerment that reduces the perceived likelihood of adverse outcomes. The phenomenon we uncover is important as unfounded expectations about an asset's value may lull consumers into making unwarranted investments, potentially harming personal finances and social welfare. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
This article presents the Day Preconstruction Method (DPM), a writing exercise designed to strengthen individuals' connection to their future selves. Across four preregistered randomized controlled experiments (N = 1,624), we tested whether the DPM strengthens future self-continuity and influences real monetary choices and valued living. DPM reliably increased future self-continuity in all studies, with positive affect and vividness as consistent predictors. No effects were observed on real monetary delay discounting. In Study 4, however, participants who imagined a distant future day showed increases in valued living over one week, an effect partially mediated by future self-continuity. These findings suggest that simple, scalable text-based interventions can strengthen psychological connectedness to the future self and support value-aligned behavior, even when economic behavior remains unchanged.
