Current Opinion in Psychology

In this work, we propose that humor violates norms that can build consensus or escalate conflict in negotiations. Drawing on social identity theory, we propose that humor commits norm violations that are more likely to be perceived as benign among ingroup observers in negotiations, but perceived as offensive to outgroup observers in negotiations. We introduce the Comedy, Consensus, and Conflict Framework to shed light on the interpersonal effect of humor on negotiations. When humor is expressed to an ingroup observer, relative to neutral communication, humor is more likely to violate weak norms that govern social group membership resulting in the violation as being perceived as benign, which promotes cooperative behaviors in negotiations such as concessions and collaborative problem-solving...

Across the lifespan, goals change in response to developmental changes in opportunities and demands, but they also bring about developmental changes regarding the acquisition of skills and resources. Generally, developing (selection), pursuing (optimization), and maintaining goals in the face of losses (compensation) contributes to successful development across the lifespan and to healthy aging in particular. Goals are dynamic; their content changes in sync with developmental goals. Moreover, there is a marked shift from a predominant orientation towards achieving gains in young adulthood and an increasingly stronger orientation towards maintenance and the avoidance of losses in older adulthood, reflecting increases in losses in various domains of functioning across adulthood...

In psychology, authors have shined a light on a lack of ethnic/racial and cultural diversity in sampling and scholarship. These issues pertain also to the study of aging and lifespan development. This article presents examples of how diverse sampling, across ethnic/racial groups and cultures, enriches theories of aging and adult development. There remain, however, numerous theoretical insights that are yet to be uncovered by future research that seeks to further diversify this sub-discipline. Good practices and avenues to diversification are considered, including targeted sampling of minority groups in the community, online sampling with use of data screening tools, lifespan-orientated surveys initiated in non-Western countries, and a redress of the balance in the perceived value of research from different regions of the world...

Loneliness in late adulthood is a public health issue. Thus, understanding the etiology of loneliness is of critical importance. Here, we conceptualize the development of loneliness in late life as dynamic interactions between individual and contextual processes. Specifically, we suggest that loneliness arises if the existing social relationships are unable to meet a set of social expectations. These expectations are fulfilled by three different layers of the social structure: 1) close confidants; 2) broader social networks; and 3) involvement in the community...

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Successful leaders often use humor to motivate, inspire, and lead. Yet, recent research suggests that the use of humor is risky for leaders. Our review suggests that humor must be morally offensive to some people for it to be perceived as funny. This inherent tension between humor and morality implies that the use of humor can sometimes act as a signal of acceptable moral standards in organizations, where a leader's use of humor carries significant risks because of the norm-violating message it sends to subordinates, or it can even be dangerous in extreme cases...

We theorize that expressing emotion often will enhance listening and responsiveness in communal relationships because the nature of cooperation called for in communal relationships often matches five functions that expressing emotion can serve. The same is less frequently true for other types of relationships.

Bullshitting is characterized by sharing information with little to no regard for truth, established knowledge, or genuine evidence. It involves the use of various rhetorical strategies to make one's statements sound knowledgeable, impressive, persuasive, influential, or confusing in order to aid bullshitters in explaining things in areas where their obligations to provide opinions exceed their actual knowledge in those domains. Distinct from gullibility (i.e., a propensity to accept a false premise in the presence of untrustworthiness cues), we highlight the research on bullibility (i...

We argue that a comprehensive understanding of emotional development across adulthood must go beyond broad dimensions of affect and consider discrete emotions. Current evidence focuses on sadness and anger, two negative emotions that exert contrasting age trajectories because anger has high adaptive value in young adulthood, when people have abundant resources and need to carve out a niche in society, whereas sadness has high adaptive value in old age, a time of declining resources that requires adaptation to increasingly unattainable goals...

Scholars have rapidly produced a robust body of literature addressing the public's beliefs in, and interactions with "misinformation." Despite the literature's stated concerns about the underlying truth value of the information and beliefs in question, the field has thus far operated without a reliable epistemology for determining the truth of the information and beliefs in question, often leaving researchers (or third parties) to make such determinations based on loose definitions and a naïve epistemology...

People have a more-nuanced view of misinformation than the binary distinction between "fake news" and "real news" implies. We distinguish between the truth of a statement's verbatim details (i.e., the specific, literal information) and its gist (i.e., the general, overarching meaning), and suggest that people tolerate and intentionally spread misinformation in part because they believe its gist. That is, even when they recognize a claim as literally false, they may judge it as morally acceptable to spread because they believe it is true "in spirit...

The spread of misinformation threatens democratic societies, hampering informed decision-making. Partisan identity biases perceptions of reality, promoting false beliefs. The Identity-based Model of Political Belief explains how social identity shapes information processing and contributes to misinformation. According to this model, social identity goals can override accuracy goals, leading to belief alignment with party members rather than facts. We propose an extended version of this model that incorporates the role of informational context in misinformation belief and sharing...

This paper reviews the existing literature on user correction to consider its value for combating misinformation on social media. We discuss the effectiveness of user correction in reducing misperceptions, and synthesize best practices, highlighting the dual audiences for public correction on social media. We outline how often user correction occurs across contexts, countries, and social media platforms. We pay special attention to the methodological constraints in existing research, emphasizing the need for using diverse and interdisciplinary methods, including longitudinal surveys and experiments, computational methods, realistic simulated environments, and qualitative methods...

Many interventions aim to protect people from misinformation. Here, we review common measures used to assess their efficacy. Some measures only assess the target behavior (e.g., ability to spot misinformation) and therefore cannot determine whether interventions have overly general effects (e.g., erroneously identifying accurate information as misinformation). Better measures assess discernment, the ability to discriminate target from non-target content. Discernment can determine whether interventions are overly general but is often measured by comparing differences in mean ratings between target and non-target content...

Our understanding of human neurocognitive aging, its developmental roots, and life course influences has been transformed by brain imaging technologies, increasing availability of longitudinal data sets, and analytic advances. The Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition is a life course model, proposed originally in 2009, featuring adaptivity and compensatory potential as lifelong mechanisms for meeting neurocognitive challenges posed by the environment and by developing or declining brain circuitry...

A growing body of research suggests that prosocial behavior increases across adulthood. Yet, whether these age differences reflect "pure altruistic" or selfish motives, or the developmental mechanisms that underlie them, are largely unknown. Within a value-based decision framework, pure altruistic tendencies can be measured and distinguished from impure altruistic motives through neural-level information. Indeed, age differences in donations appear to be driven by a genuine concern for the well-being of others...

Although the notion of cognitive aging is commonly associated with decline in popular culture, a wealth of scientific literature shows that cognitive aging is more aptly characterized as multidirectional, such that trajectories of cognitive changes include areas of stability and growth (e.g., general knowledge) in addition to decline (e.g., episodic long-term memory). This article overviews these multidirectional trajectories, the heterogeneous factors that moderate the rate of change across individual trajectories, and the extensive literature that has investigated the most important factors, such as working memory, that constrain cognition across the adult lifespan...

Misinformation can negatively affect cognition, beliefs, and behavior, and thus contribute to societal disruption. Correcting misinformation can counteract these effects by updating memory and beliefs. In this selective review, we highlight recent perspectives on and evidence for the role of memory in the efficacy of correction methods. Two theoretical accounts propose that repeating misinformation can impair or improve correction efficacy to the extent that familiarity or integrative encoding prevails. We summarize evidence that recollection of corrections can counteract potential interference from misinformation repetitions on memory and belief updating...

A primary explanation for why individuals believe disinformation is the truth bias, a predisposition to accept information as true. However, this bias is context-dependent, as research shows that rejection becomes the predominant process in a distrust mindset. Consequently, trust and distrust emerge as pivotal factors in addressing disinformation. The current review offers a more nuanced perspective by illustrating that whereas distrust may act as an antidote to the truth bias, it can also paradoxically serve as a catalyst for belief in disinformation...

Affordable and easy-to-administer interventions such as cognitive training, cognitively stimulating everyday leisure activities, and non-invasive brain stimulation techniques, are promising avenues to counteract age-related cognitive decline and support people in maintaining cognitive health into late adulthood. However, the same pattern of findings emerges across all three fields of cognitive intervention research: whereas improvements within the intervention context are large and often reliable, generalisation to other cognitive abilities and contexts are severely limited...