This chapter examines attitudes toward vaccination through the lens of moral psychology, focusing on how moral convictions shape vaccine acceptance or resistance. While vaccines are a proven tool for preventing disease, hesitancy remains widespread and increasingly moralized. Drawing on theories of moral conviction, the chapter explains how individuals perceive vaccination not just as a personal choice but as a moral issue—seen as objective, universal, and independent of authority. Three studies conducted in Poland (N > 3,700) reveal that moralized attitudes toward vaccination reinforce both support and opposition, increase distrust or trust in institutions, and predict greater acceptance of coercive measures in line with one’s stance. The chapter also evaluates the effectiveness of moral reframing—presenting pro-vaccine messages in a way that aligns with the audience’s moral values (e.g., purity, care, social norms). Results show that reframing is effective, particularly among individuals who do not strongly moralize their views. However, strong moral convictions can render individuals resistant to persuasion. The chapter concludes with practical recommendations for crafting public health messages that appeal to diverse moral foundations, highlighting the importance of matching message content to audience values for greater communication effectiveness.
Verbs, as the conventional linguistic category for expressing action and motion, possess meta-semantic associations specifically with action-orientation—associations not typically found in other grammatical classes (e.g., nouns). The central aim of this research was to examine whether the proposed association between verbs and action manifests in shorter response times for verbs compared to other grammatical forms. In Studies 1a and 1b (N1a = 136, N1b = 323), we examined the impact of exposure to verbs versus nouns on overall completion time for a complex questionnaire survey. In Studies 2a and 2b (N2a = 92, N2b = 96), we employed a syntactic classification task to investigate behavioral responses to verbs and nouns, using a pseudoword paradigm in which carefully constructed lexical stimuli were devoid of semantic meaning but clearly conveyed grammatical class through suffixes. Across all four experiments, we consistently observed shorter response times for verbs and pseudoverbs compared to nouns and pseudonouns, suggesting that grammatical class exerts meta-semantic effects on behavior.
Construal-level theory (CLT) proposes that psychological distance influences the level of abstraction at which something is mentally construed: Things perceived as less probable (likelihood) or further away from the here (spatial distance), now (temporal distance), or self (social distance) are thought about more abstractly. In this international multilab study, we tested four basic hypotheses derived from core assumptions of CLT and explore potential moderators and boundary conditions of the effects. Participants (N = 11,775) from 27 countries and regions were randomly assigned to one of four experimental protocols focused on different types of psychological distance (temporal, spatial, social, or likelihood), and each experiment manipulated psychological distance (close vs. distant). The protocols for temporal distance (n = 2,941) and spatial distance (n = 2,973) were direct replications of Liberman and Trope (Study 1) and Fujita et al. (Study 1), respectively. The remaining two protocols were paradigmatic replications, applying to social distance (n = 2,926) and likelihood (n = 2,936). The effects of psychological distance on construal level for the four present studies were as follows (positive effects are consistent with hypotheses): temporal, d = 0.08, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.003, 0.16] (effect in original study: d = 0.92); spatial, d = 0.04, 95% CI = [−0.03, 0.11] (effect in original study: d = 0.55); social, d = −0.27, 95% CI = [−0.34, −0.19]; and likelihood, d = 0.03, 95% CI = [−0.05, 0.11]. Pretests indicated that valence and abstraction were confounded in response options on the outcome measure. Controlling for this confound eliminated the hypothesis-inconsistent effect of social distance, d = 0.006, 95% CI = [−0.05, 0.07]. These findings provide limited evidence for the predictions of the theory and present a critical challenge for CLT.
Pursuing replicability — independent evidence for previous claims — is important for creating generalizable knowledge. Here we attempted replications of 274 claims of positive results from 164 quantitative papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 54 journals in the social and behavioural sciences. Replications were high powered on average to detect the original effect size (median of 99.6%), used original materials when relevant and available, and were peer reviewed in advance through a standardized internal protocol. Replications showed statistically significant results in the original pattern for 151 of 274 claims (55.1% (95% confidence interval (CI) 49.2–60.9%)) and for 80.8 of 164 papers (49.3% (95% CI 43.8–54.7%)), weighed for replicating multiple claims per paper. We observed modest variation in replication rates across disciplines (42.5–63.1%), although some estimates had high uncertainty. The median Pearson’s r effect size was 0.25 (95% CI 0.21–0.27) for original studies and 0.10 (95% CI 0.09–0.13) for replication studies, an 82.4% (95% CI 67.8–88.2%) reduction in shared variance. Thirteen methods for evaluating replication success provided estimates ranging from 28.6% to 74.8% (median of 49.3%). Some decline in effect size and significance is expected based on power to detect original effects and regression to the mean because we replicated only positive results. We observe that challenges for replicability extend across social–behavioural sciences, illustrating the importance of identifying conditions that promote or inhibit replicability.
Pozostałe osiągnięcia naukoweArtykuły (zamknięty dostęp)Journal article
Chess is a game of strategic thinking and time management, where a player can lose a game on time despite making all the best moves. Finding the best move is a deliberate and energy-intensive process in a game where players are often under time pressure. Therefore, players who can balance this trade-off will have a significant advantage. The current study explores such instances where winning is contingent on how well players balance their accuracy under time pressure. We found that winning players, compared to their opponents, followed a more adaptive decision strategy—they made more theoretical best moves (i.e., accurate moves) in highly critical positions. However, the accuracy difference between the opponents was very similar in less critical positions. We conclude that winning players have a better understanding of when and how to allocate their limited resources efficiently, even when controlling for differences in skill levels, compared to their opponents.
