Existing research documents a log-linear relationship between income and subjective well-being, known as the income–well-being gradient. Using data from millions of Americans, mainly from the Gallup Daily Poll, we find significant racial differences in this gradient. Whites exhibit a steeper income–well-being gradient than Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. These gradient differences remain after accounting for demographic, socioeconomic, neighborhood, and relative income factors. Additional analyses reveal similar racial heterogeneity in (i) other well-being measures, (ii) expected future well-being, and (iii) the age–well-being relationship. These findings underscore the important role of race in the well-being relationships and the need to better understand the dimensions of heterogeneity in the income–well-being gradient.

Public attitudes toward nuclear weapons remain a critical issue in international security, yet the thinking behind individuals’ support or opposition to their use is not well understood. This study examines how the American public reasons about whether to deploy nuclear weapons in a hypothetical war between the United States and Iran. Participants were asked to state their preference between continuing a ground war, deploying a nuclear strike resulting in 100,000 civilian casualties, or deploying a strike killing 2 million civilians. They then provided an open-ended answer where they described the reasons for their decision. Using Structural Topic Modeling, we identified 10 distinct patterns in participants’ thinking. Some responses emphasized concerns about deterrence or saving lives, while others focused on national security, or retaliation, among other reasons. The type of thinking participants employed was found to be related to their preceding choice, as well as to individual characteristics, such as gender, political affiliation, punitive–authoritarian–nationalist attitudes, and the influence of the relative emotional impact of the 2 bombs (i.e., the better bomb effect). These findings highlight the complexity of the thinking underlying nuclear decision making and help shed light on potential avenues for reducing the risk of a nuclear weapon being deployed again.

Emotional appeals are a common manipulation tactic, and it is broadly assumed that emotionality increases belief in misinformation. However, past work often confounds the use of emotional language per se with the type of factual claims that tend to be communicated with emotion. In two experimental studies, we test the effects of manipulating the level of emotional language in false headlines while holding the factual claim constant. We find that, in the absence of a fact-check, the high-emotion version of a given factual claim was believed significantly less than the low-emotion version; in the presence of a fact-check, belief was comparatively low regardless of emotionality. A third experiment found that decreased belief in high-emotionality claims is greater for false claims than true claims, such that emotionality increases truth discernment overall. Finally, we analyze the social media platform X’s Community Notes program, in which users evaluate claims (‘Community Notes’) made by others. We find that Community Notes with more emotional language are less likely to be rated helpful. Our results suggest that, rather than being an effective tool for manipulating people into believing falsehoods, emotional language induces justified skepticism.

Judging an individual’s loyalty in security-sensitive roles is a high-stakes task, yet little is known about the extent and sources of variability in such judgments. This study examined how 58 participants with experience in personnel security assessment evaluated applicant profiles connected to five different countries. Each participant reviewed five protocols and judged whether the case contained information relevant to a personnel security clearance, then rated the applicant’s loyalty on a 7-point scale. Using Bayesian probit regression and an ordinal item response model with hierarchical structure, we analyzed both binary judgments and rating patterns, accounting for country of connection, applicant gender, and participant-specific variability. Results revealed substantial between-participant variability (‘noise’) in how likely judges were to flag foreign ties as relevant. Pattern noise, reflecting idiosyncratic differences in how individuals interpret the same case, was evident in loyalty ratings. Connections to Brazil and Thailand were associated with systematically lower loyalty ratings and heightened disagreement between judges, reflecting both bias and pattern noise. Contrary to policy guidance, fewer than half of foreign connections were judged as relevant, and this tendency did not vary by participant gender. The findings underscore the risk of inconsistency in high-stakes assessments and highlight the need for structured conceptual calibration in personnel vetting.

This study investigated how alcohol intoxication and negative mood affect decision-making in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) in a high-risk sample of adults who regularly drink alcohol. Using a 2×2 between-subjects design (N=160), we experimentally manipulated alcohol intoxication (target BrAC=.06% vs. .00%) and mood (negative vs. neutral) and employed computational modeling to identify underlying mechanisms. Results showed that alcohol intoxication impaired IGT performance, with intoxicated participants selecting fewer cards from advantageous decks (estimate=−8.12, 95% CI=[−12.83, −3.23]). Evidence for an effect of negative mood was moderate but inconclusive (estimate=−4.82, 95% CI=[−9.66, 0.02]). Computational modeling revealed that both alcohol (estimate=.13, 95% CI=[.05, .21]) and negative mood (estimate=.12, 95% CI=[.04, .20]) increased reward learning rates without affecting punishment learning rates. No interaction effects were observed. These findings suggest that impaired decision-making during alcohol intoxication and negative mood states stems from heightened sensitivity to immediate rewards rather than diminished sensitivity to punishments but these effects do not appear to be additive, providing novel insights into the computational mechanisms underlying alcohol-related decision-making deficits.

Sacrificing own resources to punish norm violators is often regarded an altruistic act, promoting cooperation and fairness within social groups. However, recent studies highlight difficulties in interpreting third-party punishment as a prosocial and cooperative signal. Moving beyond abstract, decontextualized settings typically employed in economic game paradigms, we aimed to better understand the appraisal of observed punishment and punishers in real-world situations. To this end, we created and validated 24 written vignettes of everyday-life scenarios depicting interactions between a perpetrator, a victim, and a punisher. Across two preregistered experiments, we systematically manipulated key aspects of third-party punishment: transgression type and punishment type (property-oriented, corporal, or psychological; Experiment 1; N = 48) and punishment severity (weak or strong; Experiment 2; N = 50). Participants rated punishment adequacy and the punisher’s warmth, competence, and suitability as an interaction partner, whether as a friend or team leader. Results indicated preferences for psychological punishments, punishments that aligned with transgression type, and less severe punishments. Our findings support the notion that punishment is an ambiguous issue and reveal important contextual factors that contribute to its evaluation as a useful social strategy.

This research examines the impact of investment language on Home Bias, investors’ tendency to prefer local over foreign assets. Across 12 rounds of incentivized investment decisions with portfolio return feedback after each round, 398 participants deciding in a foreign language exhibited no home bias, whereas those deciding in their native language did. A moderated mediation analysis further indicates that using a foreign language reduces fluency cues linked to local assets, thereby attenuating home bias. These findings extend the literature on the foreign language effect and suggest that encouraging foreign language use in investment contexts may reduce home bias and facilitate global market risk sharing.