Cues and Clues: How Humor Targets Classify Joker Intent.

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.

Do perpetrators and victims rely on different information when judging whether aggressive behaviors are justified?

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.

Perpetrators' folk explanations of their regretted and justified aggressive behaviors.

When people explain why they behaved aggressively, they can refer to their thought process that led to their aggressive behavior - so-called explanations - or to other factors that preceded their thought process - so-called . 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 ( = 429) either recalled an aggressive behavior they regret or an aggressive behavior they believe was justified.

Perpetrators', Victims', and Witnesses' Folk Explanations of Aggressive Behaviors.

Unsurprisingly, victims and perpetrators often view aggressive behaviors differently. The current study examined whether victims, perpetrators, and witnesses also aggressive behaviors differently. The current study included 408 participants who recalled a time when they harmed another person (i.

Does Trait Hostility Moderate the Asymmetry in Victim-Perpetrator Perceptions of Aggressive Behaviors?

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.

To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply?

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.

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology through a Distributed Collaborative Network.

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges.

Child-related attributions of hostile intent and harsh discipline: Moderating effects of anger.

Two studies tested whether attributions of hostile intent (AHI) and anger for ambiguous child behaviors uniquely predict parents' harsh verbal discipline (HVD) and harsh physical discipline (HPD) or whether AHI only predicts harsh discipline when AHI occurs in conjunction with anger, as suggested by the Integrated Cognitive Model of general aggression (Wilkowski & Robinson, 2010, J. Pers., 78, 9-38).

Scientific Utopia III: Crowdsourcing Science.

Most scientific research is conducted by small teams of investigators who together formulate hypotheses, collect data, conduct analyses, and report novel findings. These teams operate independently as vertically integrated silos. Here we argue that scientific research that is horizontally distributed can provide substantial complementary value, aiming to maximize available resources, promote inclusiveness and transparency, and increase rigor and reliability.

Child maltreatment re-offending in families served by the United States Air Force Family Advocacy Program.

The current study examined child maltreatment re-offending in United States Air Force (USAF) families. In a clinical database containing 24,999 child maltreatment incidents perpetrated by 15,042 offenders between the years 1997 and 2013, 13% of offenders maltreated a child on more than one date (i.e.

Multiple Behavior Descriptions Affect the Acquisitions of STI and STT.

Four studies pursued the idea that spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) involve the formation of both inferential knowledge and associative knowledge while spontaneous trait transferences (STTs) involve only the formation of associative knowledge. These studies varied the type and amount of behavioral information from which perceivers could extract trait information. Experiments 1a and 1b used a modified savings-in-relearning paradigm and demonstrated that repeated presentations of an individual and a behavior description increased the strength of association between the target and implied trait, and this effect did not depend on whether the repeated presentations involved redundant information or new information.

Sex differences in jealousy: the (lack of) influence of researcher theoretical perspective.

The sex difference in jealousy is an effect that has generated significant controversy in the academic literature (resulting in two meta-analyses that reached different conclusions on the presence or absence of the effect). In this study, we had a team of researchers from different theoretical perspectives use identical protocols to test whether the sex difference in jealousy would occur across many different samples (while testing whether mate value would moderate the effect). In our samples, we found the sex difference in jealousy to occur using both forced choice and continuous measures, this effect appeared in several different settings, and, we found that mate value moderated participant responses.

Experiencing Instigations and Trait Aggression Contribute to Harsh Parenting Behaviors.

Three studies (total  = 1777 parents) examined whether harsh parenting behaviors would increase when parents experienced an instigation and whether this increase would be especially pronounced for parents who were high in trait aggression. These predictions were tested both when parents' experience of an instigation was manipulated (Studies 1 and 2) and when parents' perceptions of their child's instigating behavior was reported (Study 3). Further, these predictions were tested across a variety of measures of parents' harsh behaviors: (1) asking parents to report their likelihood of behaving harshly (Study 1), (2) using proxy tasks for parents' inclinations to behave harshly (Study 2), and (3) having parents report their past child-directed behaviors, some of which were harsh (Study 3).

Parents' spontaneous evaluations of children and symbolic harmful behaviors toward their child.

Parents' evaluations of children are believed to be a cognitive contributor to their subsequent child-directed harsh or physically abusive behaviors. The current research examined whether parents' (N=100) evaluations of children were moderated by either (a) the child behavior on which the evaluation was based and (b) parents' measured risk for child physical abuse. The study also explored whether parents' evaluations of children were related to their tendencies to symbolically harm their child.

Spontaneous trait inference and spontaneous trait transference are both unaffected by prior evaluations of informants.

This article reports results from a study in which participants encountered either (a) previously known informants who were positive (e.g. Abraham Lincoln), neutral (e.

Validating the Voodoo Doll Task as a Proxy for Aggressive Parenting Behavior.

Objective: Six studies ( = 1,081 general population parents) assessed the validity of the Voodoo Doll Task (VDT) as a proxy for aggressive parenting behaviors.

Methods: Participants were given an opportunity to symbolically inflict harm by choosing to stick "pins" into a doll representing their child.

Results: Individual differences in parents' trait aggression (Studies 1, 2, and 6), state hostility (Study 3), attitudes towards the corporal punishment of children (Study 4), self-control (Study 6), depression (Study 6), and child physical abuse risk (Study 6) were associated with increased pin usage.

Child maltreatment among U.S. Air Force parents deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom.

This study examined child maltreatment perpetration among 99,697 active-duty U.S. Air Force parents who completed a combat deployment.

Characteristics associated with incidents of family maltreatment among United States Air Force families.

From 2002 until 2007, the United States Air Force (USAF) revised the process of determining whether incidents of suspected family maltreatment met the criteria for maltreatment. In this study, all reported child maltreatment and partner abuse incidents in the USAF from January 2008 to July 2011 were examined to determine the extent to which characteristics of victims, offenders, and incidents affected whether incidents were determined to have met criteria for maltreatment. For both child maltreatment and partner abuse, alleged incidents in which offenders used substances and more severe incidents were more likely to have met maltreatment criteria than alleged incidents that did not involve offender substance use and less severe incidents.

What difference does a day make? Examining temporal variations in partner maltreatment.

Routine activities (RA) theory posits that changes in people's typical daily activities covary with increases or decreases in criminal behaviors, including, but not limited to, partner maltreatment. Using a large clinical database, we examined temporal variations among 24,460 incidents of confirmed partner maltreatment across an 11-year period within the U.S.

Child physical abuse risk moderates spontaneously inferred traits from ambiguous child behaviors.

The present study examined whether parents at high-risk for child physical abuse (CPA) differed from low-risk parents in their tendency to infer positive traits and negative traits from children's behaviors. The final sample consisted of 58 (25 low CPA risk and 33 high CPA risk) parents. Parents completed a false-recognition task, which involved viewing behavior descriptions paired with child photographs.

Inferences are for doing: the impact of approach and avoidance states on the generation of spontaneous trait inferences.

Spontaneous trait inferences (STIs) are ubiquitous and occur when perceivers spontaneously infer actor traits from actor behaviors. Previous research has elucidated the processes underlying STIs, but little work has focused on the functions of STIs. This article proposes that these unintentional early inferences serve a general approach or avoidance function.

The interplay of controlled and automatic processing in the expression of spontaneously inferred traits: A PDP analysis.

Inferences made about actors influence subsequent processing about those actors. Three experiments conducted in the context of spontaneous trait inference (STI) making demonstrate that such influences occur can either occur via automatic processes or via controlled processes. Results from Experiment 1 demonstrated that processing goals manipulated prior to encoding actor behavior affected the extent to which STIs automatically influenced subsequent responses but did not alter the extent to which STIs influenced those responses via controlled processes.