Construal-level theory (CLT) proposes that psychological distance influences the level of abstraction at which something is mentally construed: Things perceived as less probable (likelihood) or further away from the here (spatial distance), now (temporal distance), or self (social distance) are thought about more abstractly. In this international multilab study, we tested four basic hypotheses derived from core assumptions of CLT and explore potential moderators and boundary conditions of the effects. Participants ( N = 11,775) from 27 countries and regions were randomly assigned to one of four experimental protocols focused on different types of psychological distance (temporal, spatial, social, or likelihood), and each experiment manipulated psychological distance (close vs. distant). The protocols for temporal distance ( n = 2,941) and spatial distance ( n = 2,973) were direct replications of Liberman and Trope (Study 1) and Fujita et al. (Study 1), respectively. The remaining two protocols were paradigmatic replications, applying to social distance ( n = 2,926) and likelihood ( n = 2,936). The effects of psychological distance on construal level for the four present studies were as follows (positive effects are consistent with hypotheses): temporal, d = 0.08, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.003, 0.16] (effect in original study: d = 0.92); spatial, d = 0.04, 95% CI = [−0.03, 0.11] (effect in original study: d = 0.55); social, d = −0.27, 95% CI = [−0.34, −0.19]; and likelihood, d = 0.03, 95% CI = [−0.05, 0.11]. Pretests indicated that valence and abstraction were confounded in response options on the outcome measure. Controlling for this confound eliminated the hypothesis-inconsistent effect of social distance, d = 0.006, 95% CI = [−0.05, 0.07]. These findings provide limited evidence for the predictions of the theory and present a critical challenge for CLT.

While both prosocial teases and aggressive jokes are characterized by a humorous provocation, a tease is intended to communicate face-protective information or general affiliation while an aggressive joke is intended to socially demean the target. Thus, when targeted by a joke, people must judge whether the intention behind the joke is affiliative or aggressive. To interpret the intention behind a joke, the target must consider information such as "off-record marker" usage and the reputation of the joker. To date, however, little research has empirically tested how these factors affect attributions about jokes and the people who tell them. In the first study, participants (N = 563) took the role of a worker targeted by their boss's joke. This joke was either accompanied by two off-record markers (i.e., a wink and a laugh) or none. Participants teased with off-record markers rated the joker as less aggressive and more affiliative. In the second study, participants (N = 174) were similarly targeted by a joke, but participants received either an ambiguous off-record marker (i.e., "a laugh") or an unambiguous off-record marker (i.e., "a reassuring wink") as well as reputational knowledge of the commenter as either a known joker or not. Participants targeted by unambiguous off-record markers, indeed, rated the commenter as less aggressive and more affiliative than those targeted by ambiguous off-record markers. No evidence was found, however, that the commenter's reputation as a joker or the interaction of off-record marker ambiguity and reputation impacted perceptions of the commenter. These findings support the idea that off-record markers affect the perception of prosocial teasing.

Quantitatively coding open-ended data (e.g., from videos, interviews) can be a rich source of information in psychological research, but reporting practices vary substantially. We provide strategies for improving validity and reliability of coding open-ended data and investigate questionable research practices in this area. First, we systematically examined articles in four top psychology journals ( N = 956) and found that 21% included open-ended data coded by humans. However, only about one-third of those articles reported sufficient details to replicate or evaluate the validity of the coding process. Next, we propose multiphase guidelines for transparently reporting on the quantitative coding of open-ended data, informed by concerns with replicability, content validity, and statistical validity. The first phase involves research design, including selecting data and identifying units reliably. The second phase includes developing a coding manual and training coders. The final phase outlines how to establish reliability. As part of this phase, we used data simulations to examine a common statistic for testing reliability on open-ended data, Cohen’s κ, and found that it can become inflated when researchers repeatedly test interrater reliability or manipulate categories, such as by including a missing-data category. Finally, to facilitate transparent and valid coding of open-ended data, we provide a preregistration template that reflects these guidelines. All of the guidelines and resources provided in this article can be adapted for different types of studies, depending on context.

When people explain why they behaved aggressively, they can refer to their thought process that led to their aggressive behavior - so-called reason explanations - or to other factors that preceded their thought process - so-called causal history of reasons explanations. People's choice of what mode of explanation they give might be affected by whether they want to distance themselves (or not) from their past aggressive behaviors. To test these ideas, participants in the current study (N = 429) either recalled an aggressive behavior they regret or an aggressive behavior they believe was justified. Participants then explained why they behaved aggressively. Mostly, people gave reason explanations for their aggressive behaviors, which is consistent with past research on how people explain intentional behaviors. Further, and as predicted, participants who explained behaviors they believe were justified gave (relatively) more reason explanations and participants who explained behaviors they regretted gave (relatively) more causal history of reasons explanations. These findings are consistent with the idea that participants adjust their explanations to either provide a rationale for, or to distance themselves from, their past aggressive behaviors.

Unsurprisingly, victims and perpetrators often view aggressive behaviors differently. The current study examined whether victims, perpetrators, and witnesses also explained aggressive behaviors differently. The current study included 408 participants who recalled a time when they harmed another person (i.e., perpetrator memory), when another person harmed them (i.e., victim memory), and when they witnessed an aggressive behavior (i.e., witness memory). Replicating past research, participants rated their recalled aggressive behaviors from the victim perspective as being more harmful and less justified than they did for their recalled behaviors from the perpetrator perspective. When examining their explanations for the behaviors, participants most often explained their own aggressive behaviors by referring to their mental deliberations that led to their behavior (i.e., reason explanations). In comparison, they referred to background causal factors (i.e., causal history of reasons explanations)-such as personality traits, demographic factors, cultural norms, etc.-more when explaining others' aggressive behaviors, especially when the explanation was from the victim perspective. These findings show the subtleties in how people communicate about their aggressive interactions: When communicating about their own aggressive behaviors, people use modes of explanations that portray their behaviors as sensible, and when communicating about a time when another person behaved aggressively towards them, people use modes of explanations that omit the thought processes that led to those behaviors.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data.

Job satisfaction represents how an employee evaluates their job as favorable to unfavorable. Job satisfaction is widely studied because it can affect how an employee thinks, feels, and behaves in relation to their job. There is evidence that a supportive work environment tends to have outcomes that are more positive for the individual employees and the organization in general. While the rehabilitation counseling supervisor is a source of support (e.g., supervisor shows that they value counselor’s contributions; supervisor supports counselor decisions; supervisor trusts counselor to try new things), supervisors are often tasked with many duties in addition to their critical role of supervision and rehabilitation counselors may experience barriers to receiving support from supervisors. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between job satisfaction and support, in the form of prosocial behaviors from individuals in their organization (e.g., one member of an organization helping another complete a task; one member of the organization conveying actions of respect towards another; one member of the organization listening to anxiety and fears at work of another). Among the sample of rehabilitation counselors employed in the state vocational rehabilitation program studied, results indicate that rehabilitation counselors who received support from their supervisor and support from others in the organization reported the highest levels of job satisfaction. For counselors receiving low levels of support from their supervisor, receiving support from others in the organization seemed to make up for lack of support from the supervisor in terms of job satisfaction. In terms of job satisfaction, results indicate it is critical for rehabilitation counselors to receive support from individuals in the workplace in some capacity.

Perpetrators perceive their aggressive behaviors as more justified than victims do. This difference in perception may be due to each person relying heavily on their private thoughts and experiences, which effectively means that perpetrators and victims consider different information, and value that information differently, when judging whether an aggressive behavior is justified. The current manuscript contains four studies that tested these ideas. When judging whether an aggressive behavior is justified, perpetrators reported relying heavily on their thoughts and motives (Studies 1-3) and victims reported relying heavily on their experience of being harmed (Study 2). Further, as people considered the perpetrator's thoughts that led to the aggressive behavior, perpetrators, but not victims, became more confident in their judgments (Study 3). Finally, when judging their aggressive behavior, people felt their judgments were less biased than a "typical person's" judgments would be (Study 4). Collectively, these studies demonstrate some of the cognitive reasons that perpetrators and victims disagree on their judgments about whether an aggressive behavior is justified and, consequently, some of the cognitive barriers that need to be overcome for successful conflict resolution to occur.

A perceiver can make an inference spontaneously about an actor's disposition (e.g., she is clever) on learning of the actor's behavior (e.g., she solved the mystery half way through the novel). This chapter describes a long-term research program whose results provided: (1) converging evidence across paradigms suggesting that such spontaneous trait inference making is habitual and can be unintentional; (2) details of when and for whom spontaneous trait inferences are likely to occur; and (3) evidence that the paradigms used in the research program do not simply detect associations between traits and targets, but indeed detect inferences. The chapter also presents evidence that spontaneous inferences have social functions and can have downstream effects, affecting perceiver predictions about future actor behavior and affecting behaviors toward the actor. Finally, this chapter suggests ideas about new research that might explore the spontaneous thoughts that perceivers generate as they encounter information about actors.

Unsurprisingly, victims and perpetrators often view aggressive behaviors differently. The current study examined whether victims, perpetrators, and witnesses also explained aggressive behaviors differently. The current study included 408 participants who recalled a time when they harmed another person (i.e., perpetrator memory), when another person harmed them (i.e., victim memory), and when they witnessed an aggressive behavior (i.e., witness memory). Replicating past research, participants rated their recalled aggressive behaviors from the victim perspective as being more harmful and less justified than they did for their recalled behaviors from the perpetrator perspective. When examining their explanations for the behaviors, participants most often explained their own aggressive behaviors by referring to their mental deliberations that led to their behavior (i.e., reason explanations). In comparison, they referred to background causal factors (i.e., causal history of reasons explanations)—such as personality traits, demographic factors, cultural norms, etc.—more when explaining others’ aggressive behaviors. These findings show the subtleties in how people communicate about their aggressiveinteractions: When communicating about their own aggressive behaviors, people use modes of explanations that portray their behaviors as sensible, and when communicating about a time when another person behaved aggressively towards them, people use modes of explanations thatomit the thought processes that led to those behaviors.

Child physical abuse (CPA) is a pervasive societal problem with serious outcomes. Understanding CPA risk factors is necessary to identify those at risk for CPA perpetration and to inform efforts to prevent the occurrence of CPA. The present study provides an updated review of conceptual models of CPA, a review of model-related CPA risk factors, and a meta-analytic review of CPA risk factors found in cross-sectional, case-controlled studies. The review of conceptual models yielded >70 explanatory models of CPA from which >140 putative CPA risk factors were extracted. A three-level random-effects meta-analysis of CPA risk factors was conducted. Database and literature searches yielded 58 studies that met the inclusion criteria from which 300 effect size (ES) estimates were identified. In the meta-analysis, 292 ESs were placed into 38 CPA risk factor domains. Twenty significant individual CPA risk factor domain ES estimates and five significant relationship CPA risk factor domain ESs were found. Future studies that simultaneously consider CPA risk and protective factors from within and between ecological levels and that establish causal CPA factors are needed to better inform CPA prevention and treatment efforts.

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g., “If you do not practice these steps, you can endanger yourself and others”) or potential gains (e.g., “If you practice these steps, you can protect yourself and others”)? Collecting data in 48 languages from 15,929 participants in 84 countries, we experimentally tested the effects of message framing on COVID-19-related judgments, intentions, and feelings. Loss- (vs. gain-) framed messages increased self-reported anxiety among participants cross-nationally with little-to-no impact on policy attitudes, behavioral intentions, or information seeking relevant to pandemic risks. These results were consistent across 84 countries, three variations of the message framing wording, and 560 data processing and analytic choices. Thus, results provide an empirical answer to a global communication question and highlight the emotional toll of loss-framed messages. Critically, this work demonstrates the importance of considering unintended affective consequences when evaluating nudge-style interventions.

Victims often perceive aggressive behaviors as being more harmful than do perpetrators—a so-called victim-perpetrator asymmetry. We examined whether this victim-perpetrator asymmetry was especially strong for individuals who were high in trait hostility. In two studies—one where participants recalled actual aggressive experiences and one where participants took the perspective of a person in a vignette—we found that victims who were high in trait hostility, relative to those who were low, viewed aggressive behaviors as being most harmful. We found somewhat inconsistent effects for whether perpetrators viewed the aggressive behaviors as more justified than victims did and whether trait hostility moderated this judgment. Collectively, the current findings show that victims who are high in trait hostility are especially likely to view an aggressive behavior as harmful, which potentially makes conflict resolution difficult for these individuals and increases the likelihood they would retaliate.

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e. a controlling message) compared to no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly-internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared to the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly-internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing: Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges.

Child physical abuse (CPA) is a pervasive societal problem with serious outcomes. Understanding CPA risk factors is necessary to identify those at risk for CPA perpetration and to inform efforts to prevent the occurrence of CPA. The present study provides an updated review of conceptual models of CPA, a review of model-related CPA risk factors, and a meta-analytic review of CPA risk factors found in cross-sectional, case-controlled studies. The review of conceptual models yielded >70 explanatory models of CPA from which >140 putative CPA risk factors were extracted. A three-level random-effects meta-analysis of CPA risk factors was conducted. Database and literature searches yielded 58 studies that met the inclusion criteria from which 300 effect size (ES) estimates were identified. In the meta-analysis, 292 ESs were placed into 38 CPA risk factor domains. Twenty significant individual CPA risk factor domain ES estimates and five significant relationship CPA risk factor domain ESs were found. Future studies that simultaneously consider CPA risk and protective factors from within and between ecological levels and that establish causal CPA factors are needed to better inform CPA prevention and treatment efforts.

Aggressive behaviors occur when one person, a perpetrator, intentionally harms another person, a victim (e.g., Parrott and Giancola, 2007). When reporting their judgments, victims often report aggressive behaviors as being more harmful than perpetrators do-a so-called victim-perpetrator asymmetry. This asymmetry is wellestablished (Baumeister et al., 1990; Elshout et al., 2017; Ent and Parton, 2019; McCarthy and Rivers, 2021); however, there is scant experimental tests of the conditions under which the effect is especially strong. In that vein, the current Registered Report examined whether the victim-perpetrator asymmetry is stronger in conditions when people feel they will be evaluated for blameworthiness. In our first study, participants read a vignette describing an aggressive interaction and were assigned to adopt the perspective of either the victim or the perpetrator. In our second study, participants either recalled an instance when they intentionally harmed another person or an instance when they were harmed by another person. Further, in both studies, half the participants were told we were interested in determining who was more to blame in the situation and half received no such instructions. All participants then rated the harmfulness of the aggressive behavior. The victim-perpetrator asymmetry was unchanged by our blameworthiness manipulations in both studies. These results did not support our hypothesis that telling people they will be evaluated for blame will increase victims' and perpetrators' judgments of aggressive behaviors.

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution. The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 5 November 2018. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7611443.v1 . Jones et al. examine the generalizability of the valence–dominance model of social judgements of faces in 41 countries across 11 world regions. They find evidence of both generalizability and variation, depending on the analytical method.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world. The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 12 May 2020. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4878591.v1 This Registered Report presents evidence from 87 countries and regions showing that brief emotion-regulation interventions consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.