The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals’ well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled. Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one’s own health. Instead, individuals are asked to adapt their behaviors to protect the community at large. This raises the question of which social concerns and moral principles make people willing to do so. We considered in 23 countries (N = 6948) individuals’ willingness to engage in prescribed and discretionary behaviors, as well as country-level and individual-level factors that might drive such behavioral intentions. Results from multilevel multiple regressions, with country as the nesting variable, showed that publicized number of infections were not significantly related to individual intentions to comply with the prescribed measures and intentions to engage in discretionary prosocial behaviors. Instead, psychological differences in terms of trust in government, citizens, and in particular toward science predicted individuals’ behavioral intentions across countries. The more people endorsed moral principles of fairness and care (vs. loyalty and authority), the more they were inclined to report trust in science, which, in turn, statistically predicted prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions. Results have implications for the type of intervention and public communication strategies that should be most effective to induce the behavioral changes that are needed to control the COVID-19 outbreak.

The present research examines the ambivalence of achievement goal promotion at university, and more specifically in the psychology curriculum. On the one hand, psychology teachers explicitly encourage mastery but not performance (neither approach nor avoidance) goals. On the other hand, the selection process encourages the endorsement of not only mastery but also performance-approach goals. In fact, it would seem that both performance-approach and mastery goals are valued in a university context. Two pilot studies verified the above assumptions. Subsequently, Experiments 1, 2, and 3 showed that each of these goals corresponds to different aspects of social value. Indeed, high endorsement of mastery goals was associated with being judged as both likable (social desirability) and likely to succeed (social utility). High endorsement of performance-approach goals enhanced social utility judgments but reduced perceived likability. Performance-avoidance goals only enhanced perceived likability. The discussion focuses on the 2 functions of university, namely education (apparent in the official discourse of teachers) and selection (apparent in the university structure), and on the perceived value of achievement goals.

Two experiments investigated the differential impact of cooperation and competition on strategic information sharing and use in a three-person group decision-making task. Information was distributed in order to create a hidden profile so that disconfirmation of group members' initial preferences was required to solve the task. Experiment 1 revealed that competition, compared to cooperation, led group members to withhold unshared information, a difference that was not significant for shared information. In competition, compared to cooperation, group members were also more reluctant to disconfirm their initial preferences. Decision quality was lower in competition than in cooperation, this effect being mediated by disconfirmation use and not by information sharing. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and revealed the role of mistrust in predicting strategic information sharing and use in competition. These results support a motivated information processing approach of group decision making.

Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, N = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, N = 96; Study 3b, N = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. We also found that this relationship is mediated by perceptions of anomie, except in the case of objective inequality in Study 1. This suggests that societal inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie) and that a strong leader is needed to restore order (even when that leader is willing to challenge democratic values).

Sociologists coined the term “anomie” to describe societies that are characterized by disintegration and deregulation. Extending beyond conceptualizations of anomie that conflate the measurements of anomie as ‘a state of society’ and as a ‘state of mind’, we disentangle these conceptualizations and develop an analysis and measure of this phenomenon focusing on anomie as a perception of the ‘state of society’. We propose that anomie encompasses two dimensions: a perceived breakdown in social fabric (i.e., disintegration as lack of trust and erosion of moral standards) and a perceived breakdown in leadership (i.e., deregulation as lack of legitimacy and effectiveness of leadership). Across six studies we present evidence for the validity of the new measure, the Perception of Anomie Scale (PAS). Studies 1a and 1b provide evidence for the proposed factor structure and internal consistency of PAS. Studies 2a-c provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Finally, assessing PAS in 28 countries, we show that PAS correlates with national indicators of societal functioning and that PAS predicts national identification and well-being (Studies 3a & 3b). The broader implications of the anomie construct for the study of group processes are discussed.

This article contends that the presence of a coactor leads to a focusing effect whenever this presence represents a threat or a potential threat to self-evaluation. Experiment 1 showed that attentional focusing appears in the presence of an actual (in the case of upward comparison) or potential (in the case of mere coaction) threat to self-evaluation but not in its absence (in the case of downward comparison). Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed that the presence of a coactor affects focusing because the coactor represents a potential threat and showed that introducing a threat in downward comparison can produce a focusing effect. Experiment 4 showed that removing the threat in upward comparison decreases the focusing effect. Experiment 5 confirmed that the effects observed in upward comparison are due to attentional focusing and not to an increase in effort. Contributions to social facilitation, social comparison, and attention research are discussed.

Objective Scholars disagree on whether income inequality has incentive or disincentive effects. In the present research, we move beyond such debate and focus on the motivational processes that income inequality predicts. First, income inequality makes economic stratification salient; therefore, it should promote perceived competitiveness. Second, competitiveness can be appraised as both a challenge and a threat; therefore, it should promote both approach and avoidance motivation. Method In three studies (N = 2,543), U.S. residents from various ZIP codes reported the extent to which they perceived competitiveness in their town/city (Studies 1–3), as well as their economic achievement goals, achievement motives, and self‐regulatory foci (Studies 2–3). Results Level of local income inequality was found to be a positive predictor—via increased perceived competitiveness—of other‐approach economic goals, need for achievement, and promotion focus, as well as other‐avoidance economic goals, fear of failure (specifically, the shame/embarrassment component), and prevention focus. Furthermore, actual and perceived income inequality were positively correlated. Conclusions The conceptual and empirical work herein is the first to show how the economic environment predicts individuals’ perceptions of competitiveness, influencing personal goals, motives, and orientations. It provides a more nuanced perspective on the implications of income inequality than perspectives currently available.

The present research examines whether mastery and performance goals predict different ways of reacting to a sociocognitive conflict with another person over materials to be learned, an issue not yet addressed by the achievement goal literature. Results from 2 studies showed that mastery goals predicted epistemic conflict regulation (a conflict regulation strategy focused on the attempt to integrate both points of view), whereas performance goals predicted relational conflict regulation (a conflict regulation strategy focused on the evaluation and affirmation of self-competence). Study 1 shows these links via direct self-report measures of conflict regulation. Study 2 shows the same links using the amount of competence reported for the self and for the other as subtle measures of conflict regulation.