About UsWelcome to the Personality, Emotion, & Social Cognition Lab! Our research focuses on the social cognitive and personality processes underlying identity, understanding, and belief. We have four core areas of research. In one area, we investigate the consequences of metaphor use on a variety of outcomes related to emotion, identity, close relationships, meaning, and religiosity. In a second area, we look at how the cognitive components of nostalgia help people understand their lives and close relationships. In a third area, we probe the interplay between a component of intellectual humility—i.e., wrongness admission—and impression formation. In a fourth area, we broadly look at how various personality and cognitive processes impact beliefs about humanity, science, and politics. These lines of research often overlap and fall at the intersection of personality, social, and cognitive psychology, combining research methods from each area.. We are always interested in exploring new and exciting topics in this realm!
Check out our Lab Setup page for info on our equipment. |
Areas of Research
The Social Cognitive and Personality Processes Underlying Identity, Understanding, & Belief
The Consequences and Functions of Metaphor Use
One of the main programs of research in the PESC lab focuses on how people process and understand social information and create meaning. This program of research started with Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), but has expanded to other approaches to metaphor as well. All metaphor theories posit that metaphors are not merely fanciful speech, but tools used by all humans to understand abstract concepts (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990; Gentner, Holyoak, & Kokinov, 2001; Landau, 2016). Specifically, metaphors are composed of a mapping between an abstract concept or "target" and a concrete referent or "source". For example, when we say things like "I'm seeing red!", we are utilizing the color red (source) to understand our feelings of anger (target).The majority of metaphor research in social and personality psychology focuses on how activating metaphoric concepts impacts cognition, emotion, identity, and behavior, often referred to as conceptual metaphor effects. This is where our interest in metaphor started. For example, we have investigated the association between anger and perceptual redness (Fetterman et al., 2011; 2012; 2015), how we can leverage stimuli size to measure preferences (Fetterman & Robinson, 2012; Fetterman et al., 2014; 2015), and whether conceptual metaphor effects are operative in daily life (Fetterman, 2016; Fetterman et al., 2017; 2018; 2021). Due to concerns of replicability in this area, we have also been involved in replication projects (Meier et al., 2015; in press), in addition to incorporating replications in our publications. Later, we became interested in how individual differences in metaphoric endorsement relate to identity and decision-making (Fetterman & Robinson, 2013; Fetterman et al., 2021; Persich et al., 2019; Persich et al., 2021). Recently, we found that metaphorically locating the self in the heart (vs. head) is associated with increased God-belief (Fetterman et al., 2020). We are currently extending this work to the workplace and alcohol use.
The bulk of our current research on metaphor focuses on the consequences of metaphor use in social communication, a unique focus compared to the more typical conceptual metaphor effects. This line of research started when we created an individual differences in metaphor usage measure and found positive correlations with emotional understanding (Fetterman et al. 2016). Recently, we found positive associations between daily metaphor use and empathy (Fetterman et al., 2021). Based on these findings, we are investigating the depths of this metaphor use-empathy association, including within the realm of racial justice. We are also looking at the impact of metaphor use on racial biases in the perception of criminality and how metaphor use impacts close relationships.
Overall, using a combination of self-report, language coding procedures, and metaphor use manipulations, we explore the outcomes of metaphor use in the realms of God-belief, empathy and perspective taking, emotional understanding, romantic relationships, attraction, child development, and even politics.
Understanding Life and Relationships Through Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a defined as a "sentimental and wistful affection for the past" and has been shown to create feelings of social connection, self-esteem, and even meaning in life. We started investigating nostalgia when we found that mental transportation—an imagery-based experience, in which one mentally travels to an event—served as a mechanism for nostalgia’s benefits (Evans et al., 2021). We have also been investigating how recalling nostalgic memories involving one’s current romantic partner impacts perceptions of relationship quality, with Nicholas Evans. We find that doing so allows partners to understand and appreciate their relationship by highlighting the path that it has taken (Evans et al., 2022). Ongoing work in our lab is focused on expanding the work on both mental transportation and relationships, but also investigating the language of nostalgia.
The Social Consequences of Wrongness Admission & Intellectual Humility
We define “wrongness admission” as the act of publicly admitting belief or attitude change. We developed a measure of willingness to admit wrongness and found that admitters tend to be more humble, agreeable, and open-minded (Fetterman et al., 2019). Further studies suggest that when people admit they are wrong on social media, the impressions formed of them are positive (Fetterman et al., 2022). Scientists who admit they are wrong about past findings are also seen as better scientists (Fetterman & Sassenberg, 2015). Currently, we are investigating what happens when supervisors and politicians engage in wrongness admission. Furthermore, we are investigating how to increase wrongness admission through social modeling.
Starting October 1st, the PESC lab will begin a Templeton funded project looking at interventions to increase wrongness admissions in everyday life. This project is part of the Applied Research in Intellectual Humility Project, led by the Intellectual Humility Science group.
Biases and Belief
It is fascinating that two people can see the same information and come to different conclusions. Therefore, we consistently pursue lines of research that focus on political, religious, science, and human nature beliefs, often from a personality perspective. For example, Ben Wilkowski and our lab used a lexical approach to derive a taxonomy of generally desirable goals (i.e., values; Wilkowski et al., 2020) and generally undesirable goals (i.e., vices; Wilkowski et al., 2022). We are currently investigating how these goals relate to things like political ideology (Wilkowski et al., in press), COVID-19 beliefs, belief in a just world, and religiosity. In addition, we are planning to investigate goals across the lifespan through longitudinal research.
A new line of research has to do with the impact of personal experience on science denial. In a recent set of studies (Evans & Fetterman, 2022), participants filled out personality questionnaires and read about a recent scientific finding in personality psychology. Those who noticed a mismatch between their scores and the finding were more likely to feel discomfort and deny the science. We concluded that personal experience plays a significant role in conclusions people make about science. This idea is not new. Yet, most research on science denial neglects the power of personal experience. Continuing this line of research, we are interested in how personal experience impacts vaccine hesitancy (Evans & Fetterman, in press) and how it fits with broader models of science denial.
One of the main programs of research in the PESC lab focuses on how people process and understand social information and create meaning. This program of research started with Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), but has expanded to other approaches to metaphor as well. All metaphor theories posit that metaphors are not merely fanciful speech, but tools used by all humans to understand abstract concepts (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990; Gentner, Holyoak, & Kokinov, 2001; Landau, 2016). Specifically, metaphors are composed of a mapping between an abstract concept or "target" and a concrete referent or "source". For example, when we say things like "I'm seeing red!", we are utilizing the color red (source) to understand our feelings of anger (target).The majority of metaphor research in social and personality psychology focuses on how activating metaphoric concepts impacts cognition, emotion, identity, and behavior, often referred to as conceptual metaphor effects. This is where our interest in metaphor started. For example, we have investigated the association between anger and perceptual redness (Fetterman et al., 2011; 2012; 2015), how we can leverage stimuli size to measure preferences (Fetterman & Robinson, 2012; Fetterman et al., 2014; 2015), and whether conceptual metaphor effects are operative in daily life (Fetterman, 2016; Fetterman et al., 2017; 2018; 2021). Due to concerns of replicability in this area, we have also been involved in replication projects (Meier et al., 2015; in press), in addition to incorporating replications in our publications. Later, we became interested in how individual differences in metaphoric endorsement relate to identity and decision-making (Fetterman & Robinson, 2013; Fetterman et al., 2021; Persich et al., 2019; Persich et al., 2021). Recently, we found that metaphorically locating the self in the heart (vs. head) is associated with increased God-belief (Fetterman et al., 2020). We are currently extending this work to the workplace and alcohol use.
The bulk of our current research on metaphor focuses on the consequences of metaphor use in social communication, a unique focus compared to the more typical conceptual metaphor effects. This line of research started when we created an individual differences in metaphor usage measure and found positive correlations with emotional understanding (Fetterman et al. 2016). Recently, we found positive associations between daily metaphor use and empathy (Fetterman et al., 2021). Based on these findings, we are investigating the depths of this metaphor use-empathy association, including within the realm of racial justice. We are also looking at the impact of metaphor use on racial biases in the perception of criminality and how metaphor use impacts close relationships.
Overall, using a combination of self-report, language coding procedures, and metaphor use manipulations, we explore the outcomes of metaphor use in the realms of God-belief, empathy and perspective taking, emotional understanding, romantic relationships, attraction, child development, and even politics.
Understanding Life and Relationships Through Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a defined as a "sentimental and wistful affection for the past" and has been shown to create feelings of social connection, self-esteem, and even meaning in life. We started investigating nostalgia when we found that mental transportation—an imagery-based experience, in which one mentally travels to an event—served as a mechanism for nostalgia’s benefits (Evans et al., 2021). We have also been investigating how recalling nostalgic memories involving one’s current romantic partner impacts perceptions of relationship quality, with Nicholas Evans. We find that doing so allows partners to understand and appreciate their relationship by highlighting the path that it has taken (Evans et al., 2022). Ongoing work in our lab is focused on expanding the work on both mental transportation and relationships, but also investigating the language of nostalgia.
The Social Consequences of Wrongness Admission & Intellectual Humility
We define “wrongness admission” as the act of publicly admitting belief or attitude change. We developed a measure of willingness to admit wrongness and found that admitters tend to be more humble, agreeable, and open-minded (Fetterman et al., 2019). Further studies suggest that when people admit they are wrong on social media, the impressions formed of them are positive (Fetterman et al., 2022). Scientists who admit they are wrong about past findings are also seen as better scientists (Fetterman & Sassenberg, 2015). Currently, we are investigating what happens when supervisors and politicians engage in wrongness admission. Furthermore, we are investigating how to increase wrongness admission through social modeling.
Starting October 1st, the PESC lab will begin a Templeton funded project looking at interventions to increase wrongness admissions in everyday life. This project is part of the Applied Research in Intellectual Humility Project, led by the Intellectual Humility Science group.
Biases and Belief
It is fascinating that two people can see the same information and come to different conclusions. Therefore, we consistently pursue lines of research that focus on political, religious, science, and human nature beliefs, often from a personality perspective. For example, Ben Wilkowski and our lab used a lexical approach to derive a taxonomy of generally desirable goals (i.e., values; Wilkowski et al., 2020) and generally undesirable goals (i.e., vices; Wilkowski et al., 2022). We are currently investigating how these goals relate to things like political ideology (Wilkowski et al., in press), COVID-19 beliefs, belief in a just world, and religiosity. In addition, we are planning to investigate goals across the lifespan through longitudinal research.
A new line of research has to do with the impact of personal experience on science denial. In a recent set of studies (Evans & Fetterman, 2022), participants filled out personality questionnaires and read about a recent scientific finding in personality psychology. Those who noticed a mismatch between their scores and the finding were more likely to feel discomfort and deny the science. We concluded that personal experience plays a significant role in conclusions people make about science. This idea is not new. Yet, most research on science denial neglects the power of personal experience. Continuing this line of research, we are interested in how personal experience impacts vaccine hesitancy (Evans & Fetterman, in press) and how it fits with broader models of science denial.
Language Analysis (Natural Language Processing)
Language provides a unique window into the human mind. Language analysis has been used to predict depression, narcissism, political orientation, and even to identify Shakespeare. The PESC lab uses language analysis techniques to study religion, memory, lying, politics, emotions, meaning in life, nostalgia, metaphor, and more.
Side-Projects
The PESC lab typically has one or two "side-projects" that aim to investigate timely, or just fascinating, topics. One recent topic of interest was so-called Doomsday Preppers (Fetterman et al., 2019). Preppers believe that there is going to be a major catastrophe and that they need to stockpile weapons, food, ammo, build bomb-shelters, learn survivalist techniques, and have specific plans for "bugging out" when the scenario happens. Another recent project investigated how using neighborhood apps impacts beliefs about local crime rates.
A current topic is focused on how having a dual identity (e.g., Mexican-American, Worker-Student) can impact educational outcomes, but also influence the way people with such identities process threats (e.g., immigration legislation). Another project is focused on belief in evil and how it relates to attitudes toward public policy issues.
A current topic is focused on how having a dual identity (e.g., Mexican-American, Worker-Student) can impact educational outcomes, but also influence the way people with such identities process threats (e.g., immigration legislation). Another project is focused on belief in evil and how it relates to attitudes toward public policy issues.