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ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

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    25 August 2021, Volume 53 Issue 8 Previous Issue    Next Issue

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    N170 adaptation effect of the sub-lexical phonological and semantic processing in Chinese character reading
    ZHANG Rui, WANG Zhenhua, WANG Xiaojuan, YANG Jianfeng
    2021, 53 (8):  807-820.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00807
    Abstract ( 2269 )   HTML ( 308 )  
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    The event-related potential (ERP) studies have revealed a component (N170) near tempo-occipital electrodes was sensitive to visual words. However, its role in word reading is still controversial. A common view is that the N170 engaged in the visual/orthographic processing, whereas some evidence has shown the N170 involved in phonological and semantic processing. By taking advantage of the Chinese writing system's ideographic property, the current study directly examined whether the N170 was sensitive to the phonological and semantic processing in reading Chinese characters.
    Two ERP experiments were conducted in a neural adaption paradigm by manipulating the repetition of the sub-lexical phonetic/semantic radical. The ERP data were collected while participants performed a phonological judgment task on the 4th character after silently reading the four characters consecutively. The phonological similarity (Experiment 1) and semantic similarity (Experiment 2) were manipulated among the four characters. Experiment 1 examined the neural adaption of the four characters sharing the phonetic radical (e.g., 敏, 侮, 悔, 莓), the character's pronunciation (e.g., 妹, 枚, 镁, 莓), both of them (e.g., 酶, 梅, 霉, 莓), or neither (e.g., 淮, 崛, 郎, 莓) respectively. Experiment 2 examined the neural adaption of the four characters sharing the semantic radical (e.g., 狡, 狂, 猜, 狒), the character's meaning (e.g., 豹, 鹿, 羚, 狒), both of them (e.g., 狮, 狼, 狐, 狒), or neither (e.g., 淮, 崛, 郎, 狒) respectively.
    In both experiments, the results showed a significant neural adaption at N170 in all of the four conditions. The amplitude of the N170 observed in the 1st character decreased in the 2nd - 4th characters. In Experiment 1, the N170 neural adaptation at the left PO7 electrode was sensitive to the repetition of the phonetic radical, and the repetition of the character's pronunciation, but not to the repetition of both. These results indicated the left mid-fusiform gyrus might be sensitive to the visual/orthographic and phonological processing but not to the orthography-to-phonology mapping in Chinese character reading. In Experiment 2, the N170 neural adaption at the left PO7 electrode was only sensitive to the repetition of the character’s meaning, which indicated the semantic processing might modulate the left N170 in character reading. The N170 neural adaption at the right PO8 electrode was sensitive to the repetition of the semantic radical and the character's meaning, which suggested that right N170 was involved in visual/orthographic and semantic processing in reading characters.
    In sum, the findings showed that the N170 was involved in the visual/orthographic processing and engaged in the phonological and semantic processing in Chinese character reading. Furthermore, the left N170 was sensitive to the character's phonological and semantic information, whereas the right N170 was sensitive to the character’s meaning and its semantic radical.

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    The development of visual simultaneous processing skill subcomponents of Chinese children with developmental dyslexia and the relationship with reading
    LI Jie, YANG Yue, ZHAO Jing
    2021, 53 (8):  821-836.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00821
    Abstract ( 2098 )   HTML ( 255 )  
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    Chinese children with developmental dyslexia (DD) have been found to show a deficit in processing multi-elements in a variety of visual tasks parallelly. Nevertheless, the potential mechanisms of this visual simultaneous processing deficit and its relation to the reading ability still remain unclear. The ability of simultaneously processes multi-character strings is restricted by different cognitive components, including perceptual processing speed, visual short-term memory capacity, selective spatial attention distribution pattern, and the ability to inhibit distractors. Therefore, this article attempted to explore the potential mechanisms underlying the visual simultaneous processing in Chinese children with DD in the framework of the theory of visual attention (TVA). Two experiments are conducted to investigate the fundamental cognitive components regarding the visual simultaneous processing skill, with further examining the relationship between these components and the Chinese reading ability from developmental perspective.
    43 Chinese children with DD and 46 chronological-age matched children with normal reading ability are recruited, and the two groups respectively include students from high and low grades in primary schools for the purpose of probing into the developmental changes in these TVA-based components of the visual simultaneous processing. The two experiments separately utilize high-frequency Chinese characters as verbal materials and the symbols as nonverbal materials. A modified combined theory of visual attention (CombiTVA) paradigm is employed to collect participants’ performances during the multi-element processing. Based on the response accuracy in each level of CombiTVA task, the four parameters including processing speed (C), visual short-term memory storage (K), attentional weight (ω), and irrelevant inhibition (α) are estimated through TVA model.
    We first compare the four TVA parameters between groups and grades, and then conduct hierarchical regression analyses to examine the contributions of possible impaired TVA parameters of reading difficulty. The results of the two experiments illustrate that the DDs from high and low grades both exhibit reduced perceptual processing speed comparing to the controls during processing multiple elements in parallel, with a trend of developmental decrease in this component deficit. Moreover, significant differences in the selective spatial attention distribution pattern between dyslexic and normal readers are only present in Experiment 1 with Chinese characters as the stimuli rather than in Experiment 2 with the nonverbal symbols as the stimuli. In details, during multi-processing of Chinese characters, a balanced pattern in attentional distribution is observed in DDs from both two grade groups; while the attentional weight of normal readers develops from right-lateralized to balanced patterns. Further hierarchical regression analyses reveals that the impaired components of visual simultaneous processing are separately associated with different levels of Chinese reading, the component of perceptual processing speed independently and effectively accounts for the variance of the sentence reading performance regardless of material properties, while the component of selective spatial attention distribution pattern is related to the single-character reading speed. These findings unfold the modulation of language specificity of Chinese to the cognitive deficits of DDs to some extent.
    This research is helpful to deepen our understanding of the internal mechanism of the visual simultaneous processing deficit in Chinese dyslexic children, and contribute to designing relevant intervention targeting visual simultaneous processing skills to improve reading efficiency in the dyslexics.

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    The role of novel semantic association in the promoting effect of insight on memory
    CHEN Shi, LIANG Zheng, LI Xianglan, CHEN Yanran, ZHAO Qingbai, YU Quanlei, LI Songqing, ZHOU Zhijin, LIU Lizhong
    2021, 53 (8):  837-846.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00837
    Abstract ( 3184 )   HTML ( 543 )  
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    Previous empirical research has found the effect of insight on promoting memory retention during problem solving. Furthermore, neuroimaging studies have revealed that the amygdala, which is assumed to be associated with Aha experience, plays an important role in long-term memory of insightful events. While the emotional Aha experience is a key characteristic of insightful problem solving, some researchers emphasized that the core processes in creating insights involve breaking the mental set and forming novel and valuable associations. However, the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the promoting effect of insight on memory have not yet been fully explored. In this study, the paradigm of choice of answers to ChineseChengyu riddles was adopted to investigate how the process of forming novel associations impacts the effect of insight on promoting subsequent memory.
    Two experiments were conducted in this study. In Experiment 1, the paradigm of choice of answers to ChineseChengyu riddles consisted of two phases. In the learning phase, participants were asked to select the novel and suitable answer to theChengyu riddle from four options; after one week, in the testing phase they were asked to recall the answer that they chose in the learning phase. The novel association and normal association condition were distinguished according to the selections of participants. The paradigm used in Experiment 2 was similar to that of Experiment 1. Additionally, the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to record the neural activity in the learning phase.
    The results of Experiment 1 showed that the score of Aha experience in the learning phase and accuracy in the testing phase were significantly higher in the novel association condition compared to the normal association condition. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that the activity in the brain regions related to insight, including the hippocampus, amygdala, middle frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus, were significantly greater in the successful recall compared to the failed recall in novel association condition. Further analysis indicated that successful recall of novel association involved more activity in the right hippocampus compared to the recall of normal association.
    The current study verified the promoting effect of insight on memory, and indicated that forming novel semantic associations and related activity in the hippocampus may underlie this effect.

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    The effect of anger on malevolent creativity and strategies for its emotion regulation
    CHENG Rui, LU Kelong, HAO Ning
    2021, 53 (8):  847-860.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00847
    Abstract ( 9804 )   HTML ( 1472 )  
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    Malevolent creativity involves the application of novel ideas to purposely harm others. Instances of it appear everywhere in daily life, such as fraud and money laundering. It is necessary to unveil the factors that can impact malevolent creativity and develop corresponding strategies to reduce its potential harm to society. Previous studies have found that malevolent creativity can be affected by factors such as unfair situations, emotional intelligence, and motivational orientation. Given that malevolent creativity requires individuals to harm others and aggressive behaviours often result from anger, it can be inferred that anger might be an important factor behind malevolent creativity. Moreover, considering that anger can stimulate general creativity through emotional arousal and be strongly relevant to implicit aggression, both emotional arousal and implicit aggression might play key roles in the association between anger and malevolent creativity. If anger can enhance malevolent creativity, the investigation of the impact of emotion regulation strategies on the malevolent creativity of angry individuals is a significant and novel research topic. The current study aimed to explore the effect of anger on malevolent creativity and its underlying mechanisms, and to determine whether such an effect could be modulated by strategies of emotional regulation.
    Study 1, in which a total of 102 college students participated, had a single between-participant factorial design (emotion: anger vs. sadness vs. neutral emotion). There were 34 participants in each group. Participants in the anger and sadness groups were asked to complete the 5-min autobiographical memory task to induce corresponding emotions, and the participants in the neutral emotion group were instructed to complete a 5-min control task (record the schedule for the day in detail). Next, the participants were asked to solve one 10-min malevolent creativity problem (adapted realistic presented problem) and one 5-min general creativity problem (alternative uses task) in each group. Participants’ implicit aggression was assessed using the preference-phrase method. Study 2, in which a total of 120 college students participated, had a single between-participant factorial design (emotion regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal vs. expressive suppression vs. control group). There were 40 participants in each group. All participants were first asked to induce anger using the autobiographical memory task, and then solve one 5-min malevolent creativity problem. Next, participants in the emotion regulation groups were asked to regulate anger using the relative emotion regulation strategies (3 min), while participants in the control group were asked to complete a 3-min copying task. After the session of emotion regulation, all participants were asked to solve another 5-min malevolent creativity problem. Participants’ implicit aggression was assessed as in Study 1.
    In Study 1, the results showed that the anger group had higher levels of general creative performance, malevolent creative performance, and implicit aggression, than the sadness and neutral emotion groups. Additionally, emotional arousal mediated the effect of anger on both general creative performance and malevolent creative performance (idea fluency and originality), whereas implicit aggression merely mediated the effect of anger on malevolent creative performance (idea fluency, originality, and malevolence). In Study 2, the results showed that anger in the cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression groups significantly decreased after emotion regulation. No similar result was observed for the control group. The control group had significantly higher levels of malevolent creative performance and implicit aggression than the other groups. While implicit aggression mediated the effect of emotion regulation strategies on idea fluency, originality, and malevolence of malevolent creative performance, emotional arousal merely mediated the effect of emotion regulation strategies on idea fluency and originality. These results were independent of control factors such as individual creative potential, malevolent creative potential, and aggression in daily life.
    In conclusion, these findings indicate that anger can stimulate individual malevolent creativity through both implicit aggression and emotional arousal pathways. Emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression can effectively impair the malevolent creativity of angry individuals. Theoretically, this study enriches the research field of malevolent creativity and provides evidence and interpretation of the effect of anger on malevolent creativity and its potential mechanism. In practice, this study confirms that cognitive reappraisal and expression inhibition strategies can effectively weaken the malevolent creativity of angry individuals. This emphasises the necessity of regulating anger to avoid or reduce the social harm resulting from malevolent creativity.

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    Structural and functional characteristics of impulsive-related brain regions in heroin addicts with long-term withdrawal
    CAI Huiyan, MIAO Xin, WANG Pengfei, LIN Zhiwei, WANG Mengcheng, YANG Wendeng, MA Yankun, ZENG Hong
    2021, 53 (8):  861-874.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00861
    Abstract ( 2235 )   HTML ( 345 )  
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    Impulsivity is a typical characteristic of drug addiction. In addition to the problems of inhibition and executive control, the driving force from multiple dimensions is also an important reason for impulsive drug use. The psychological drive stems from a variety of sources, including reward effect, S-R related cue response through conditioning. Low levels of inhibition are insufficient to resist the effects of the drive. This leads to an unbalanced state, which results in habitual behavior tendency.
    Impulsivity has both a behavioral and neural basis. Although impulsivity may be a precursor of drug use, long-term use may also damage brain structures and functions related to the inhibition of impulsive behavior. There is an open question about whether these structures and functions recover after withdrawal. In this research we used multiple imaging methods to study the extent of recovery in heroin addicts who had been abstinent for several years on average.
    Thirty-five abstinent heroin addicts (26 males; average period of abstinence = 43.55 months) and 26 healthy controls (26 males) were recruited using advertisements in the community. The heroin group and the healthy control group were compared on multiple measures of brain structure and function related to inhibition using the imaging methods of voxel-based morphometry (VBM), amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo). Based on the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), right inferior frontal gyrus (15, 60, -6) was selected as the region of interest in which to study functional connectivity (FC).
    Heroin addicts showed damage in inhibition-related brain structures and functions an average of 44 months after withdrawal, and the extent of damage was correlated with lifetime dose. (1) Compared to the healthy control group, the heroin group had significantly (a) lower gray matter volume (p = 0.03) and lower whole-brain volume (p = 0.05); (b) lower gray matter in the right superior frontal gyrus (pAlphaSim < 0.01); (c) higher regional homogeneity in right posterior central gyrus and lower regional homogeneity in right middle frontal gyrus of the orbitofrontal cortex (pAlphaSim < 0.01); (d) lower amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation in right inferior frontal gyrus of the orbitofrontal cortex and left hippocampus (pAlphaSim < 0.01); (e) higher functional connectivity between right inferior frontal gyrus of the orbitofrontal cortex and the right caudate, and lower functional connectivity between the right inferior frontal gyrus and right middle temporal gyrus as well left precentral gyrus (pAlphaSim < 0.01). (2) Within the heroin group, higher lifetime dose of heroin was significantly associated with lower gray matter volume in the right middle temporal gyrus and left middle cingulate (pAlphaSim < 0.01).
    The results showed that compared to healthy controls, heroin addicts had significant damage in brain structure and functions related to impulsivity even after an average period of 44 months of abstinence. In addition, the extent of damage was correlated with the lifetime dose of heroin. These results suggest that heroin addicts could continue to show impulsive behavior even after several years of abstinence, perhaps explaining the high rate of relapse in this population. Future research could test this conclusion by examining correlations between brain damage in areas related to inhibition and behavioral measures of impulsivity after a period of abstinence. The current evidence underscores the need to take impulsivity into account in relapse prevention programs for heroin addicts.

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    Changes of teachers’ subjective well-being in mainland China (2002~2019): The perspective of cross-temporal meta-analysis
    XIN Sufei, LIANG Xin, SHENG Liang, ZHAO Zhirui
    2021, 53 (8):  875-889.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00875
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    The subjective well-being (SWB) of teachers affects not only their own mental health and career development, but also has flow-on effects for the well-being of students in their care, school processes and the sustainable development of education. As a consequence, the SWB of teachers has attracted the attention of researchers across various fields. Previous work on the SWB of Chinese teachers offers contradictory findings; while some studies have found the level of SWB of Chinese teachers to be high, others provide a more pessimistic assessment. The debate has proven difficult to untangle for two reasons: (1) different norms were applied in different studies, and (2) previous meta-analysis does not consider the effect of publication year. In order to address these limitations, and to explore the pattern and changing trajectory of Chinese teachers’ SWB over time, the current study applies a cross-temporal meta-analysis technique.
    Fifty-one samples/papers using the General Wellbeing Schedule (GWB) to investigate Chinese teachers’ SWB level (N= 13, 600) from 2002 to 2019 were included. Each sample was coded according to journal type, sampling area, learning stage, and sex ratio, these being used as independent or control variables. Our results showed that: (1) The total scores of SWB among Chinese teachers were negatively correlated by year, indicating that teachers’ SWB level has decreased steadily in the past 18 years. (2) The changes of eight social indicators, including social economic condition (residents’ consumption level, housing prices, elderly dependency ratio and educational expenditure), social connectedness (divorce rate, family size and urbanization level) and overall threat (crime rate), were key predicting factors for the decrease in SWB level among Chinese teachers. (3) The decreasing trend in SWB levels was more striking among primary and middle school teachers than for college teachers, with the mean SWB scores of college teachers being significantly higher than that of primary and middle school teachers.
    In conclusion, the present study showed that Chinese teachers’ SWB level has decreased in the context of rapid social change occurring in contemporary China. In addition, combined with the corresponding macro-social indicators, a three-dimensional theoretical framework is proposed to explain the SWB for teachers as a social group.

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    The impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on followers’ job-related outcomes: The mediating role of emotional exhaustion
    SONG Qi, CHEN Yang
    2021, 53 (8):  890-903.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00890
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    Recent research has paid increasing attention to the consequences of empowering leadership. The majority of them has devoted considerable efforts in identifying the bright side of empowering leadership, arguing that it enables followers to develop their self-management capacity and can be effective in driving positive job-related outcomes. According to the double-edge-sword effect perspective, empowering leadership may have a negative side, and this has attracted growing research interest, thus making the question of when empowering leadership hinders its proposed effect on followers a particularly important one. Leadership is widely understood as a relational process and its effectiveness depends not only on the behaviors of actors (i.e., leaders themselves) but also on the perceptions of receivers (i.e., their followers). Accordingly, this study takes both leaders and followers into consideration with an expectation of providing a deeper insight into the influence of empowering leadership. Drawing on the theory of person-environment fit, we examine the impact of leaders’ empowering behaviors that are needed and received by followers on their job-related outcomes. Specifically, the misfit between empowering leadership needed and received by followers can be appraised as a stressor for them, as such a misfit represents the discrepancy between followers’preferred states(i.e., needed) andactual states(i.e., received). Based on the transactional model of stress, we proposed that perceived misfit between empowering leadership needed and received (as a stressor) is likely to induce emotional exhaustion (as a strain) which will in turns have ramifications for followers’ job-related outcomes, including lower satisfaction toward leaders, less organizational citizenship behaviors, and poorer job performance. We also hypothesized that followers’ emotional exhaustion will be higher when they experience excessive empowerment compared with the situation when they face deficient empowerment.
    We tested our proposed model in two multi-wave, multi-source surveys. In Study 1, we invited 150 leader-follower dyads from 12 companies in China to participate in our study. In this study, data were collected in two waves to minimize common method bias. At wave 1, all followers were invited to assess their empowering leadership that they needed and received, emotional exhaustion, satisfaction toward their leaders, as well as demographics. Half a month later, at wave 2, all leaders were invited to provide their demographics and assess their follower’s organizational citizenship behavior and job performance. All the participants provided valid responses and the final sample thus includes 150 unique leader-follower dyads. In Study 2, we collected data from 253 followers and 50 leaders from 38 companies in China to replicate the results analyzed in Study 1 in terms of two-wave data collection. At wave 1, all followers were invited to assess their empowering leadership needed and received, psychological stress, psychological empowerment, and demographics. Half a month later, at wave 2, all the followers were invited to evaluate their emotional exhaustion and satisfaction towards leaders, their 50 leaders were invited to provide their demographics and assess their organizational citizenship behavior and job performance. 243 followers provided valid responses and thus the final sample includes 243 leader-follower dyads.
    Given that the data structure in these two studies were non-independent, we conducted multilevel polynomial regression and response surface modeling using the software of Mplus 8.2. We also employed the block variable approach to calculate the indirect effects. Besides, we tested the significance of the indirect effects with theMonte Carlo simulation procedure inRStudio. The results of data analyses showed that: (a) the misfit between needed and received empowering leadership was positively and significantly related to followers’ emotional exhaustion; (b) compared with deficient empowerment, followers’ emotional exhaustion was higher when they received excessive empowerment; and (c) followers’ emotional exhaustion mediated the misfit of needed and received empowering leadership on followers’ satisfaction with their leaders, organizational citizenship behavior, and job performance.
    Our study provides several theoretical and practical implications. First, we employed a relational perspective and took both leaders and followers into consideration to investigate the impacts of empowering leadership on followers’ job-related outcomes. This helps paint a more complete picture of the consequences of empowering leadership. Second, by drawing on the theory of person-environment fit together with the transactional model of stress, we investigated the effects of the empowering leadership needed and received on followers’ job-related outcomes and its underlying mechanisms. Third, the asymmetry effects of excessive versus deficient empowerment on followers’ emotional exhaustion revealed that in line with the “too much of a good thing” effect, empowering leadership is not a panacea. Overall, we shed valuable insights into the literature on empowerment by demonstrating that there is no optimal amount of empowerment. The consequences associated with a certain amount of empowerment differ among individuals. Our findings also offer important practical insights to leaders on how to leverage the benefits of empowering leadership.

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    The impact of normative misperception on food waste in dining out: Mechanism analyses and countermeasures
    CHEN Sijing, PU Xueli, ZHU Yue, WANG Hao, LIU Jianwei
    2021, 53 (8):  904-918.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00904
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    Normative misperception refers to the cognitive bias between an individual’s normative perception and people’s true views of the behaviors or attitudes of others. The occurrence of normative misperception has been proven to be universal, and it occurs when people mistakenly estimate the benefit of a certain attitude and/or behavior. Scholars have begun to draw on normative misperception to explain humans’ social behavior. However, whether different types of norm misperception (behavioral vs. attitudinal misperception) have different effects on behavior, and whether different normative information (descriptive vs. injunctive normative information) diverges in alleviating the normative misperception and its influence on behavior remain unclear. We also ask whether the theory of impression management could be applied to normative misperception in exploring the psychological mechanism underlying its impact on behavior. The current study aims to address these issues with food waste in dining out as the target behavior.
    Study 1 was a correlational study based a survey carried out among residents from six provinces situated in the western, central, and eastern regions of China. We measured the independent variables (behavioral misperception and attitudinal misperception), dependent variable (food wasting behavior during the most recent eating out), and mediators (three dimensions of impression evaluation: sociability, morality, and competence) with scales developed in previous literature. After excluding outliers and participants who failed the attention check question, we collected 957 valid data. In study 2, two two-factorial experiments (descriptive normative vs. non-normative information in experiment 1; injunctive normative vs. non-normative information in experiment 2) were conducted to test the effects of descriptive (injunctive) normative information on behavioral (attitudinal) misperception. We also ran bootstrap analysis separately for each set of data to determine the relationship among normative information, misperception, impression evaluation, and food wasting behavior.
    The results of study 1 showed that participants tended to overestimate others’ food waste and their approval of wasteful behavior, and both misperceptions had significant positive effects on food waste, implying that these misperceptions not only exist, but also promote people’s food wasting behavior further. The t-test revealed a greater effect on attitudinal misperception as opposed to behavioral misperception on food waste. In addition, as speculated, the sociability dimension of impression evaluation mediated the relationship between both misperceptions and wasteful behavior, whereas the mediating role of morality and competence were not significant. In other words, because participants overestimated others’ wasteful behavior and their degree of approval, they worried that being too economical in public might be considered as being stingy or indecent, and this worry further bred wasteful behavior. Study 2 confirmed the difference between the mechanisms underlying the two types of normative information: descriptive normative information reduced the behavioral misperception itself, creating a new normative perception among the participants and prompting them to switch from complying with the original norm (people generally waste food) to adhering to the new one (people’s wasteful behavior is not as common as imagined), which mitigated misperception’s negative effect on wasteful behavior. On the contrary, injunctive normative information did not decrease the attitudinal misperception itself but rather moderated the relationship between the misperception and behavior: misperception still existed, but its prescriptive power declined.
    The findings of this study highlight the importance of considering the distinction between the two types of normative misperception in social norm campaigns, and suggest two possible ways of correcting people’s normative misperception: providing descriptive normative information to decrease people’s behavioral misperception and providing injunctive normative information to ameliorate attitudinal misperception’s detrimental effect on behavior.

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    The effect of opponent’s emotional facial expressions on individuals’ cooperation and underlying mechanism in prisoner’s dilemma game
    XIONG Chengqing, XU Jiaying, MA Danyang, LIU Yongfang
    2021, 53 (8):  919-932.  doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2021.00919
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    Previous research suggested that emotional facial expressions significantly influence perceivers’ behaviors in interactive decision-making. Although emotional facial expressions of opponents could bias participants’ behaviors, little was known about the reason for this effect. Based on the social functions of emotions and dual-process theories of decision-making, the present study aimed to explore the effect of three emotional facial expressions, i.e. happiness, neutral and anger, on individuals’ cooperative behaviors in prisoner's dilemma game and the underlying mechanism, i.e. the mediating role of expectations of others’ cooperation and the moderating role of individuals’ decision modes.
    Three experiments were designed to test the hypothesis. The emotional facial expressions were manipulated by grey-scale images of emotionally expressive faces (3 males and 3 females, 260 × 300 pixels) taken from a standard set of Chinese Affective Picture System (CAPS) in three experiments. Experiment 1 investigated the effects of emotional facial expressions (happiness/neutral/anger) on participants’ cooperation, as well as the mediating role of expectations of partner’ cooperation with a one-factor between-subjects design. A total of 180 adult participants were recruited for this experiment (109 females; mean age 22.36 ± 4.10 years) and were randomly assigned to happy, neutral or angry conditions. Experiment 2 adopted a 3(facial expressions: happiness/neutral/anger) × 2(decision modes: intuitive/deliberative) between-subjects design to examine moderating role of decision modes, as well as the mediating role of expectations of partner’ cooperation. A total of 185 adult participants were recruited for this experiment (130 females; mean age 21.48 ± 2.71 years). And the decision modes were manipulated by instructions. Experiment 3 adopted a 3(facial expressions: happiness/neutral/anger) × 2(time pressure: time constraint/time delay) between-subjects design to examine moderating role of time pressure, as well as the mediating role of expectations of partner’ cooperation. A total of 218 adult participants were recruited for this experiment (148 females; mean age 23.74 ± 3.11 years). And the time pressure were manipulated by imposing a time constraint.
    The results of the three experiments showed: (1) participants were found to be more cooperative towards happy partners compared to angry ones, and the expectations of partners’ cooperation mediated the relationship between emotional facial expressions and participants’ cooperative behaviors (Experiment 1); (2) only under the condition of intuitive decision mode, participants were found to be more cooperative towards happy and neutral partners compared to angry ones, and the expectations of partners’ cooperation mediated the relationship between emotional facial expressions and participants’ cooperative behaviors (Experiment 2); (3) only under the condition of time constraint, participants were found to be more cooperative towards happy partners compared to angry and neutral ones, and the expectations of partners’ cooperation mediated the relationship between emotional facial expressions and participants’ cooperative behaviors (Experiment 3).
    Our findings contribute to literature in two ways. Firstly, the study extends our understanding of the phenomenon that emotional facial expressions influence individuals’ cooperative behaviors. Secondly, our findings further enrich and extend the evidence and field of the interpersonal effect of emotional facial expressions in interactive decision-making. These findings thereby have important implications for understanding the mechanism underlying the effect of different emotional facial expressions on individuals’ cooperative decision-making.

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