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Six preregistered studies show that the degree of similarity of two objects biases people’s spatial memory of these objects. When objects are high in similarity, people remember having seen them closer together in space than when they are low in similarity. All six studies provide correlational evidence, showing that the more similar participants rated two stimuli, the smaller they remembered the distance between them. This was true for both conceptual and perceptual similarity (Study 3). Furthermore, Studies 2, 4A, and 4B provide evidence of causality by manipulating similarity experimentally. Replicating the correlational findings, highly similar stimuli were remembered as closer together than stimuli low in similarity. This pattern was found across different stimulus categories and similarity dimensions. Overall, these findings show that the similarity of stimuli influences perceivers’ reconstruction of their spatial locations.

We show that spatial distance between two objects influences how people categorize these objects. We report three (two pre-registered) experiments that show that when objects are presented close together (proximal), they are more likely to be categorized in a superordinate category than when they are presented further apart (distant). In Experiments 1A and 1B, participants provided spontaneous category labels in an open response format. In Experiment 2, we asked participants to indicate their preference for either of two category labels. We found that when objects were close together, they were categorized more often into superordinate categories than when objects were far apart (Experiments 1A and 2). Our findings demonstrate that the categorization of objects is, in part, determined by where they are in relation to other objects.

Leaders often find themselves in complex situations in which they must navigate competing and contradictory demands. Consequently, leaders often experience ambivalence. While followers pay close attention to leaders and use their leaders’ behaviors and emotions as cues for modeling their own behavior, there is little empirical work exploring how followers perceive leader ambivalence and how these perceptions affect followers. Therefore, in three studies (total N  = 879), we examined whether perceiving leader ambivalence could facilitate followers’ willingness to speak up. We also investigated the underlying mechanism of this effect, testing whether perceptions of leader ambivalence led to inferences of both higher leader cognitive flexibility and responsiveness, which then would increase the likelihood that followers speak up. In line with our hypotheses, followers showed a greater willingness to speak up when perceiving an ambivalent leader than a non-ambivalent leader. This effect was serially mediated by perceptions of both increased leader cognitive flexibility and responsiveness. Study 3 also showed that when followers perceived an ambivalent leader, they expected fewer negative consequences when speaking up about a variety of issues (e.g., response to dissatisfaction). We discuss the implications of our findings for future research on ambivalence in leadership and organizational contexts.

The Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) is a stimulus set that provides researchers with English language words that have been pre-rated on bipolar scales for valence, dominance, and arousal. Researchers rely on these pre-ratings to ensure that the words they select accurately reflect the affective responses these words elicit. Each word has a valence rating reflecting the degree to which people experience the word as positive or negative, with midpoint ratings on this scale presumably reflecting neutrality. However, neutral words tend to vary substantially in arousal, suggesting that not all neutral words are the same. Some researchers account for this by using the bipolar valence ratings in conjunction with the arousal ratings, selecting low-arousal neutral words when neutrality is what they seek. We argue that the varying levels of arousal in neutral words is due to varying levels of ambivalence. However, the idea that midpoint valence ratings for ANEW stimuli may hide varying levels of ambivalence has not yet been examined. This article provides evidence that words in the ANEW that appear neutral actually vary markedly in the levels of ambivalence they elicit and that this is related to their levels of arousal. These findings are relevant for research, past and present, that use the ANEW because ambivalence has different psychological consequences than neutrality, and therefore complicates the ability to draw clear inferences and maintain experimental control.

Individuals with low (rather than high) self-esteem often struggle with existential concerns. In the present research, we examined whether these existential concerns may be alleviated by seemingly trivial experiences of both real and simulated interpersonal touch. A brief touch on the shoulder by a female experimenter led individuals with low self-esteem to experience less death anxiety (Study 1) and more social connectedness after a death reminder (Study 2). Reminding individuals with low self-esteem of death increased their desire for touch, as indicated by higher value estimates of a teddy bear, a toy animal that simulates interpersonal touch (Study 3). Finally, holding a teddy bear (vs. a cardboard box) led individuals with low self-esteem to respond to a death reminder with less defensive ethnocentrism (Study 4). Individuals with high self-esteem were unaffected by touch (Studies 1–4). These findings highlight the existential significance of embodied touch experiences, particularly for individuals with low self-esteem.

Research shows that people’s self-reports may be biased by an initial elevation phenomenon in which ratings are higher the first time that people take a survey as compared to the second and subsequent times. Apart from the fact that this phenomenon exists, and that it might bias ratings for negative subjective experiences more strongly than positive ones, little else is known. In the present study, we examined whether the initial elevation phenomenon occurs for commonly used trait measures, such as ratings on personality inventories and life satisfaction. We hypothesized that the initial elevation phenomenon may be associated with the (un)desirability of the content of the self-report items such that scores for undesirable facets would show initial elevation and scores for desirable facets would show the reverse. We tested this in an online convenience sample (N = 3,329) using 5 facets of a personality inventory and a single item measure of life satisfaction. Our hypotheses were not supported. Our findings suggest that at least for online convenience samples, ratings on personality inventories and life satisfaction are not strongly impacted by initial elevation.

Prior research exploring the relationship between evaluations and body movements has focused on one-sided evaluations. However, people regularly encounter objects or situations about which they simultaneously hold both positive and negative views, which results in the experience of ambivalence. Such experiences are often described in physical terms: For example, people say they are \"wavering\" between two sides of an issue or are \"torn.\" Building on this observation, we designed two studies to explore the relationship between the experience of ambivalence and side-to-side movement, or wavering. In Study 1, we used a Wii Balance Board to measure movement and found that people who are experiencing ambivalence move from side to side more than people who are not experiencing ambivalence. In Study 2, we induced body movement to explore the reverse relationship and found that when people are made to move from side to side, their experiences of ambivalence are enhanced.

With three convenient samples (n = 1,087) and one sample representative for the German population in terms of age and gender (n = 210), we replicate research by Zlatev (2019) showing that perceived benevolence-based and perceived integrity-based trustworthiness increase with a target's level of caring about a social issue. We show that these results generalize to various issues ranging from environmental issues (i.e., installation of wind turbines in the North Sea) to issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., online teaching to prevent the spread of the virus). Furthermore, we provide initial behavioral evidence for this effect by showing that transfers in a trust game increase with a target's caring about a social issue. All results are robust for age, gender, and social issue. To provide best estimates for the effect of a target's level of caring on perceived trustworthiness, we report results of three mini meta-analyses including our findings as well as the findings of the original research. Policy implications are discussed.

With three convenient samples (n = 1,087) and one sample representative for the German population in terms of age and gender (n = 210), we replicate research by Zlatev (2019) showing that perceived benevolence-based and perceived integrity-based trustworthiness increase with a target’s level of caring about a social issue. We show that these results generalize to various issues ranging from environmental issues (i.e., installation of wind turbines in the North Sea) to issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., online teaching to prevent the spread of the virus). Furthermore, we provide initial behavioral evidence for this effect by showing that transfers in a trust game increase with a target’s caring about a social issue. All results are robust for age, gender, and social issue. To provide best estimates for the effect of a target’s level of caring on perceived trustworthiness, we report results of three mini meta-analyses including our findings as well as the findings of the original research. Policy implications are discussed.

People use spatial distance to talk and think about differences between concepts, and it has been argued that using space to think about different categories provides a scaffold for the categorization process. In the current study, we investigated the possibility that the distance between response keys can influence categorization times in binary classification tasks. In line with the hypothesis that distance between response keys can facilitate response selection in a key-press version of the Stroop task, our results showed that responses on incongruent Stroop trials were significantly facilitated when participants performed the Stroop task with response keys located far apart, compared with when they performed the task with response keys located close together. These results support the idea that the spatial structuring of response options facilitates categorizations that require cognitive effort, and that people can incorporate environmental structures such as spatial distance in their thought processes. Keeping your hands apart might actually help to keep things apart in your mind.