Authenticity has emerged over recent decades as a prominent theme in both the press and in political research-and peaked in the 2016 presidential contest that pitted Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. In this context, we attempted to answer the question: How do voters judge a presidential candidate's authenticity? Here we use motivated reasoning and correspondent inference theory as theoretical frameworks to examine how partisan preference combines with perceptions of unfettered speech and strategic impression management to influence voter judgments of a candidate's authenticity. An online survey of 525 respondents demonstrated that individuals' partisan preferences influenced both judgments of a candidate's authenticity and their perceptions of behaviors signifying authenticity (use of unfettered speech versus strategic impression management). These behavioral signals partially mediated the relation between candidate preferences and authenticity judgments. Moreover, voters, given their partisan preferences, differentially weighted candidates' use of unfettered speech and strategic impression management tactics in their judgments of authenticity. Finally, unfiltered/politically incorrect speech was found to have both positive and negative effects on authenticity judgments. Findings further elucidate the nature of authenticity as perceived in others and identify intermediary variables and boundary conditions that influence those perceptions.

A promising way to mitigate inequality is by addressing students’ worries about belonging. But where and with whom is this social-belonging intervention effective? Here we report a team-science randomized controlled experiment with 26,911 students at 22 diverse institutions. Results showed that the social-belonging intervention, administered online before college (in under 30 minutes), increased the rate at which students completed the first year as full-time students, especially among students in groups that had historically progressed at lower rates. The college context also mattered: The intervention was effective only when students’ groups were afforded opportunities to belong. This study develops methods for understanding how student identities and contexts interact with interventions. It also shows that a low-cost, scalable intervention generalizes its effects to 749 4-year institutions in the United States.

Subjective socioeconomic status is robustly associated with many measures of health and wellbeing. The MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status (i.e., the MacArthur ladder) is the most widely used measure of this construct, but it remains unclear what exactly the MacArthur ladder measures, given its low correlation with objective measures and high predictive utility. In the present research we investigated this issue by examining the relationship between scores on the MacArthur ladder and measures of both economic circumstances and non-economic social status. In three studies (total N=1,310) we found that economic circumstances and social status are distinct constructs that are both uniquely associated with scores on the MacArthur ladder. We found that both factors were also uniquely associated with measures of health and well-being. Our findings suggest that the MacArthur ladder’s robust predictive validity may result from the fact that it measures two factors – economic circumstances and social status – that are each independently associated with health outcomes. These findings provide a novel perspective on the large body of literature that uses the MacArthur ladder and suggests that health researchers should do more to disentangle the social and economic aspects of subjective socioeconomic status.

Racial disparities in health are a major public health problem in the United States, especially when comparing chronic disease morbidity and mortality for Black versus White Americans. These health disparities are primarily due to insidious anti-Black racism that permeates American history, current culture and institutions, and interpersonal interactions. But how does racism get under the skull and the skin to influence brain and bodily processes that impact the health of Black Americans? In the present article, we present a model describing the possible neural and inflammatory mechanisms linking racism and health. We hypothesize that racism influences neural activity and connectivity in the salience and default mode networks of the brain and disrupts interactions between these networks and the executive control network. This pattern of neural functioning in turn leads to greater sympathetic nervous system signaling, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation, and increased expression of genes involved in inflammation, ultimately leading to higher levels of proinflammatory cytokines in the body and brain. Over time, these neural and physiological responses can lead to chronic physical and mental health conditions, disrupt wellbeing, and cause premature mortality. Given that research in this area is underdeveloped to date, we emphasize opportunities for future research that are needed to build a comprehensive mechanistic understanding of the brain-body pathways linking anti-Black racism and health.

Envy is a negative emotion experienced in response to another person’s higher status. However, little is known about the composition of its most important element: status. The present research investigates the two main forms of social status (objective and subjective) in the generation of envy. In Study 1, participants recounted real-life situations when they felt envious; in Study 2 we examined whether the effect was the same in a controlled situation. We consistently found that those who were the most respected in the eyes of others were envied more than the richest ones. Furthermore, perceived deservingness of the superior other’s success differentiated between benign and malicious envy. Although previous studies focused on material comparisons when investigating envy, our results indicate that envy is rather a subjective social status related emotion. Not material, but social advantage of the superior other causes the most painful envy and future studies should put more emphasis on this type of social comparison in envy research.

Is anti-Black racial discrimination due to “a few bad apples”? Or, is there a larger pattern of widespread discrimination? This question about the distribution of discrimination is fundamental for understanding the causes of discrimination and for choosing effective solutions; yet we know surprisingly little about how discrimination is distributed. The current paper explores the distribution of discrimination using meta-analytic data and simulations from experimental studies in two critical contexts: hiring and housing. The meta-analysis revealed that anti-Black discrimination is found in more than 80% of studies. Simulations of widespread anti-Black discrimination using a normal distribution were more consistent with the experimental data on racial discrimination than were simulations of concentrated anti-Black discrimination using a Pareto distribution. These findings help address the perennial question about the distribution of discrimination and offer a rigorous quantitative method to refine the debate between concentrated and widespread accounts going forward.