: People often buy on behalf of others. We ask whether dispersion in online ratings (variance) is weighted more when choosing for others than for oneself. Across three experiments, participants chose between products with similar mean star ratings but differing in variance. Decisions for others consistently favored the low-variance option, whereas self-choices were more tolerant of dispersion. The pattern replicated across recipient types (friend, stranger) and other-oriented contexts (coercion vs. pure gift). Results link self-other choice asymmetries to a ubiquitous cue in marketplaces and suggest practical design: when purchases are other-focused, platforms might prioritize items with higher consensus.
: Food (il)literacy has major health implications, calling for a better understanding of how people form accurate and inaccurate beliefs about food and nutrition. In three high-powered preregistered studies, we tested whether repetition (repeated vs. new claims, Study 1) and nonprobative images (claims with vs. without a nonprobative image, Studies 2a and 2b) influence truth judgments about correct and incorrect food and nutrition claims. In Study 1, we found that repetition increases truth judgments regardless of claim truth status, suggesting repetition-induced belief for correct and inaccurate food and nutrition information. In Studies 2a and 2b, nonprobative images showed no significant effects despite relatively high statistical power. As a communication tool, repetition could aid food literacy, yet also foster food illiteracy.
: Although anxiety has been linked to self-esteem in correlational and longitudinal studies, its causal effect on self-esteem has not been experimentally tested. To fill this gap, we conducted two studies: a pilot (N = 58) and a main experiment (N = 172), in which we experimentally induced anxiety to test its impact on state self-esteem. In the main study, we additionally examined the effect of anxiety on state self-efficacy. The results confirmed detrimental effects of experiencing anxiety on state self-esteem as well as state self-efficacy. Our findings are discussed with regard to the consequences of anxiety and the potential mechanisms underlying its impact on state self-esteem.
Abstract: Social interactions often involve conflicting demands, where pursuing one goal hinders another. Landkammer and Sassenberg (2016) studied the impact of co-opetition – the conflicting simultaneous demand to cooperate and compete with the same target – on cognitive flexibility. They found that compared to pure competition and cooperation, experiencing co-opetition increases cognitive flexibility (i.e., reduced rigidity in decision-making and generating more diverse ideas in a brainstorming task). Two conceptual and one direct replication (total N = 1,340) found no difference in cognitive flexibility contingent to interdependence, and Bayesian analysis showed strong evidence against an effect (BF 10 < 0.05). Our results failed to replicate the impact of co-opetition on flexibility, suggesting that conflicting demands might facilitate cognitive flexibility only in case of other types of intraindividual conflict.
