Research on online reviews has identified reviewer- and review-related factors that impact persuasiveness. We add to this literature by investigating reviewers’ as well as readers’ perspectives on a given review. We find that reviewers’ “objectivity illusion”—the belief that their opinions are objective, i.e., reviewer objectivism—adversely impacts readers’ reactions to their online reviews. In two studies and one supplemental study, we find for positive as well as negative reviews that reviewers habitually high in objectivism see their reviews as more persuasive and are more willing to share them, although readers evaluate them as less persuasive because they find objectivist reviewers less likable. These studies demonstrate that reviewers who write less persuasive reviews are most likely to share them, which holds implications for businesses seeking to improve review persuasiveness.

Human beings have a bias blind spot. We see bias all around us but sometimes not in ourselves. This asymmetry hinders self-knowledge and fuels interpersonal misunderstanding and conflict. It is rooted in cognitive mechanics differentiating self- and social perception as well as in self-esteem motives. It generalizes across social, cognitive, and behavioral biases; begins in childhood; and appears across cultures. People show a bias blind spot in high-stakes contexts, including investing, medicine, human resources, and law. Strategies for addressing the problem are described.

According to dating folklore, playing "hard-to-get" is an effective strategy for attracting prospective mates. However, some research suggests that this strategy could backfire if it leads prospective mates to withhold their attraction in return. The present research aimed to review the scope of research on the link between playing hard-to-get - i.e., appearing uncertain in one's interest and/or difficult to attract - and romantic or sexual outcomes. A scoping search was conducted in the electronic databases of PsycINFO, Sociology Source Ultimate, Anthropology Plus, and Academic Search Ultimate using key words related to playing hard-to-get in the context of dating. A total of 18 studies were included in the review. Research suggests that playing hard-to-get may work if optimal levels of perceived uncertainty and difficulty are achieved. Additional variables were identified as being important when evaluating the tactic's efficacy. These include the pursuer's own level commitment to the pursued partner and aversion to uncertainty, and both the pursuer and pursued partners' gender and attachment styles. Directions for future research and the relevance of sociocultural norms in dating are discussed. Keywords: playing hard-to-get, dating, romantic relationships, mating strategy, attraction.

Abstract This chapter concerns the divergent processes by which people come to know themselves and other people and the resulting consequences. People come to know themselves (or come to gain intrapersonal knowledge) primarily by looking inward to internal thoughts, feelings, and motives (i.e., by introspecting). They come to know others (or come to gain interpersonal knowledge) primarily by looking outward to observable behaviors (i.e., by extrospecting). These different processes for gaining knowledge lead to important differences in what people believe about themselves versus others. Importantly, the divergent routes of introspection and extrospection lead people to see others as biased and themselves as “right”—especially when the self and other disagree in their perceptions and beliefs. This bias blind spot gives rise to intellectual arrogance and escalates interpersonal conflict. The differing epistemological routes of introspection and extrospection do not always lead people to feel better about themselves than others, however. For example, people may view themselves as uniquely prone to worry, uniquely motivated by fear of embarrassment, and uniquely subject to deviant thoughts—all as a result of their reliance on introspection for assessing themselves but extrospection for assessing others.

People think that they see things as they are in "objective reality," and they impute bias and other negative qualities to those who disagree. Evidence for these tendencies initially emerged in the domain of politics, where people tend to assume that there are objectively correct beliefs and positions. The present research shows that people are confident in the correctness of their views, and they negatively judge those who disagree, even in the seemingly "subjective" domain of art. Across seven experiments, participants evaluated paintings and encountered others who agreed or disagreed with their evaluations. Participants saw others' evaluations as less objective when they clashed with their own, and as more influenced by biasing factors like conformity or financial incentives. These aesthetic preferences felt as objective as political preferences. Reminding people of their belief that artistic preferences are "matters of opinion" reduced this thinking, but did not eliminate it. These findings suggest that people's convictions of their own objectivity are so powerful as to extend to domains that are typically regarded as "subjective."

These studies investigate underappreciated benefits of reading memories, including memories of other people, for happiness, psychological well-being, and loneliness. In the studies, college students (Study 1), residents of assisted-living facilities (Study 2), and MTurk workers online (Study 3) wrote down memories. They also predicted how they would feel after reading their own and others' memories at a later date. Then, later on, participants read memories that they or another participant had written. Individuals felt happier, less lonely, and higher in well-being after reading memories, regardless of whether those memories were their own or someone else's. Participants underpredicted the affect boost that they would gain from reading memories. This affective forecasting error was related to individuals' perceptions of the “mundaneness” of the memories, and the error was especially pronounced when individuals read others' memories rather than their own. Implications of reading memories for promoting well-being and reducing loneliness are discussed.

Expressions of sexual interest on the part of professors toward students can be unfairly coercive due to the power dynamic involved. Three experiments (totaling 336 participants) explore a different cost of such sexual overtures or "passes." That cost involves students' interest in pursuing success in the scholarly field in which the pass occurred. U.S. college students, both male and female, contemplated receiving a pass from a professor who had previously praised their abilities in a valued field of study. Afterwards, compared to their peers who did not contemplate such a pass, those who did imagine a pass reported decreased academic identification (Experiments 1 and 3), more negative perceptions about how their professor viewed them (and more negative perceptions of their professor; Experiments 1–3), and lower state self-esteem (Experiment 3). Female students were more susceptible to these deleterious consequence than were male students, and the difference persisted regardless of the professor's gender (Experiment 2). This gender difference was due in part to women's more intense reaction to the doubts that the pass raised for them about their academic fitness. These results hold important implications for how sexual advances in academic settings should be viewed by suggesting an important and previously undocumented set of negative consequences that arise when professors make passes at students.

This chapter concerns the divergent processes by which people come to know themselves and other people, and the resulting consequences. People come to know themselves (or come to gain “intrapersonal knowledge”) primarily by looking inwards to internal thoughts, feelings, and motives (i.e., by “introspecting”). They come to know others (or come to gain “interpersonal knowledge”) primarily by looking outwards to observable behaviors (i.e., by “extrospecting”). These different processes for gaining knowledge lead to important differences in what people believe about themselves versus others. Importantly, the divergent routes of introspection and extrospection lead people to see others as biased, and themselves as “right”—especially when the self and other disagree in their perceptions and beliefs. This bias blind spot gives rise to intellectual arrogance and escalates interpersonal conflict. The differing epistemological routes of introspection and extrospection do not always lead people to feel better about themselves than others, however. For example, people may view themselves as uniquely prone to worry, uniquely motivated by fear of embarrassment, and uniquely subject to deviant thoughts—all as a result of their reliance on introspection for assessing themselves but extrospection for assessing others.

The speed of thinking is a frequently overlooked aspect of mental life. However, the pace of thought is an essential property of thinking, and its consequences have recently begun to be discovered. In this chapter, we review the psychological consequences of accelerated and decelerated thought pace. We begin by examining how the manipulation of thought speed alters mood, self-perception, risk-taking, creativity, and arousal. We highlight the energizing, activating, and hedonic effects of fast thinking, and we show how thought-speed effects are independent of thought content, fluency, and goal progress. We describe an adaptive theory of thought speed wherein psychological responses to the acceleration of thinking confer adaptive advantages for confronting novel, urgent, and rapidly changing situations, and engaging in behaviors driven by appetitive motivation. Lastly, we discuss implications of thought speed and its manipulation for treatment of mental illness, for design and delivery of communications and messages, and for life in the age of rapid access and exposure to information.

Abstract Social psychological research on thinking has generally focused on the attitudes, emotions, motivations, and biases that affect thinking and consequent behavior. What has received less attention is the speed of thinking: how quickly thinking occurs and whether thoughts accelerate or slow down. Communication design and processing may take for granted that the structure and reception of messages occur at a certain speed. Recent findings from the psychological study of thought speed shed light on ways that this research may be applied to health communication. Fast and slow rates of thinking are correlated with distinct patterns of affective, cognitive, physiological, and behavioral events. Fast thinking is associated with positive mood, energy, approach motivation, arousal, creativity, and risk-taking. Slow thinking is associated with negative mood and depression, low energy, and cognitive impairment. Potential theories exist for why psychological and physiological experiences are associated with thought speed. Recent experimental research demonstrates that thought speed can be successfully manipulated to elicit psychological effects, and it can be manipulated independent of thought content. Researchers, healthcare practitioners, and communicators should be aware of the psychological correlates and consequences of thought speed and consider harnessing the effects of thought speed to augment communication. Thought acceleration and deceleration can be integrated into the design and processing of health communication.

Studies have found that accelerated thought speed induces positive mood. Positive mood and thought speed typically are abnormally low for individuals experiencing depression. Two experiments show that the positive mood of individuals with mild to moderate depressive symptoms is boosted by a manipulation accelerating thought speed. Participants read streaming text presented at a controlled rate in order to induce either fast-paced thinking or neutral-paced thinking. In both experiments, individuals with mild to moderate depressive symptoms (based on the Beck Depression Inventory-II) who were led to think fast reported more positive mood than those induced to think at a neutral pace. They also reported more positive mood at post-test relative to pre-test. Individuals with minimal or no depressive symptoms showed similar responses, whereas those with more severe depressive symptoms appeared unaffected. No effects emerged on measures of negative mood or general depressive symptoms. Future studies should investigate potential therapeutic effects of fast thinking in clinical samples and whether repeated inductions of fast thinking produce extended benefits.

People tend not to recognize bias in their judgments. Such "bias blindness" persists, we show, even when people acknowledge that the judgmental strategies preceding their judgments are biased. In Experiment 1, participants took a test, received failure feedback, and then were led to assess the test's quality via an explicitly biased strategy (focusing on the test's weaknesses), an explicitly objective strategy, or a strategy of their choice. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants rated paintings using an explicitly biased or explicitly objective strategy. Across the three experiments, participants who used a biased strategy rated it as relatively biased, provided biased judgments, and then claimed to be relatively objective. Participants in Experiment 3 also assessed how biased they expected to be by their strategy, prior to using it. These pre-ratings revealed that not only did participants' sense of personal objectivity survive using a biased strategy, it grew stronger.

Thought speed can be altered via controlled exposure to stimuli such as temporally paced text. Experiments show that thinking quickly induces positive mood and that the effect cannot be attributed to alterations of thought content or fluency. The effect is obtained across varied manipulations, including ones that alter the pace of thought involved in reading, problem solving, and visual comprehension. The experience of thinking fast signals a basic imperative for action and triggers a set of responses that mobilize the individual to act. These responses include not only heightened positive affect but also changes in behavior (i.e., increased risk taking), self-perception (i.e., increased self-confidence), and problem solving (i.e., increased creative insight). Implications of these thought-speed effects are discussed with respect to both everyday experiences that induce fast thinking and clinical psychiatric conditions (e.g., depression and mania) that are characterized by thought-speed abnormalities.

Although much is known about the pathology of Bacillus thuringiensis against invertebrates, current understanding of its natural ecology is limited. This study evaluated the biodiversity of B.thuringiensis in relation to its interaction with plants. Phylogenetic relationships between 44 reference and field-collected strains, determined using 16S rRNA and gyrB gene sequences, revealed a high degree of variability, similar to that found in databases. An Arabidopsis thaliana in vitro inoculation model was developed to screen the ability of B.thuringiensis to colonise roots. Significant colonisation differences up to 91-fold were observed between strains, and correlation between strain phylogeny and colonisation was found. The genetics and biochemistry of auxin production; presence of the gene encoding indole pyruvate decarboxylase; and the abilities of Bt strains to swarm, grow in rich/minimal media and affect root growth differed between the strains, but only auxin production correlated significantly with ability to colonise roots. Co-inoculation with Burkholderia phytofirmans PsJN or Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 produced no effect on B.thuringiensis colonisation levels, regardless of the co-inoculant. Similarly, root colonisation of A.thaliana mutants impaired in plant defences was not significantly higher compared with controls. This is the first systematic and phylogenetic evaluation of B.thuringiensis interaction with plants.