W J Chopik
Biographic Data
| ID | 40468 |
|---|---|
| NAME | W J Chopik |
| GIVEN NAMES | W J |
| FAMILY NAME | Chopik |
| SIGNATURE | CHOPIK W J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1748-8738 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 97 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 238 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 97 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Harnessing the Benefits of Honesty for Individuals, Relationships, and Society
Honesty is highly valued across societies. Communicating in truthful ways is widely seen as moral and desired across interpersonal relationships. Despite the value societies place on honesty, there are personal and social factors that often inhibit truthful communication and its potential benefits. In the current paper, we describe the implications of honesty for policy in three key domains: in interpersonal and group relationships, within health…
Cynicism among friends
Dual age identity
Social groups and categories are fundamental to how individuals understand themselves and others across the life span. The model of the dual age identity proposes that individuals hold two interrelated identities: (a) a fluid age-group identity that shifts as people grow older (e.g., teenager, young, middle-aged, and old people) and (b) a more enduring, permanent generational identity tied to shared historical experiences (e.g., Greatest Generati…
Social Support, Social Strain, and Self-Perceptions of Aging
The current study examined changes and variation in self-perceptions of aging (SPA) and how these perceptions vary according to sources of support and strain from spouses, children, family, and friends. We used random intercept cross-lagged panel models to model within-person changes in SPA and support/strain over twelve years (2008–2020) among 22,160 older adults from the Health and Retirement Study. There was a bidirectional, positive associati…
Spot-On or Stereotypical? A Social Relations Model of Life Satisfaction and Relationship Status Satisfaction Ratings Among Friends
We examined how people assessed their friends’ life satisfaction and relationship status satisfaction among 197 groups of four friends ( N = 788), using Social Relations Models. We found that variance in life satisfaction judgments was explained about equally by perceivers (23%) and targets (24%). However, variance in status satisfaction judgments was largely explained by targets (53%) rather than perceivers (9%). In other words, people tend to a…
The Right Fit
Social interactions are crucial for social connection and well-being, yet individuals differ in how much they benefit from them. This two-week experience sampling study ( N = 157; 10,547 social interactions) explored how trait social anxiety shapes interaction quality (i.e., pleasantness, playfulness, and meaningfulness) and momentary energy. We also examined the moderating roles of interaction channel (face-to-face vs. mediated), group size (lar…
Friends’ Personality Similarity and Its Association With Friendship Well-Being
Homophily in psychological characteristics is common, yet recent evidence suggests that personality trait similarity among friends may be less common. Moreover, little is known about whether and how personality similarity—and perceptions of this similarity—among friends shapes how they feel about their relationships in group settings. In a study of 369 quads of friends ( N = 1,476), we found personality similarity in most Big Five traits (except …
From Spark to Strain? Changes in Relationship Satisfaction as a Function of Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry
OBJECTIVE: Narcissism is often proposed to drive attraction early in relationships but ultimately leads to poor long-term outcomes that are distressing to narcissistic individuals' partners. We examined changes in relationship satisfaction over a six-year period as a function of narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry. METHOD: Data came from 5869 romantic dyads and a subsample of 533 early relationships within their first year. Participa…
Truth and Bias in Partner Perceptions of Attachment Orientation Over Time
People’s attachment orientations change over time and are linked with their relationship experiences. However, it is unclear whether perceptions of a partner’s attachment orientation—which likely reflect (and affect) aspects of a relationship—track with how the partner changes over time. Do people become more accurate judges over time? Further, are changes in judgments of partners’ dispositions affected by how happy people are in their relationsh…
Investigating object orientation effects across 18 languages
Mental simulation theories of language comprehension propose that people automatically create mental representations of objects mentioned in sentences. Mental representation is often measured with the sentence-picture verification task, wherein participants first read a sentence that implies the object property (i.e., shape and orientation). Participants then respond to an image of an object by indicating whether it was an object from the sentenc…
Evaluating Associations Between Friendship Characteristics and Mental, Physical, and Cognitive Health
Friendships are cited as important contributors to physical, mental, and cognitive health, but many studies rely on single-time-point measures and models that conflate within- and between-person variation. Using data from 23,248 middle-aged and older adults in the Health and Retirement Study, we applied advanced longitudinal models—specifically STARTS variants of ARTS and RI-CLPM—to examine reciprocal associations between friendship characteristi…
Daily Support to Close Friends and Mood Among Older Men and Women
Support provision may enhance older adults’ well-being. Yet support for friends, a voluntary and socially engaging behavior, remains relatively understudied. This study examines daily support to close friends and its within-person links to mood, focusing on gender differences. Older adults ( n = 180, Mean age = 74.02, 57% female) completed 5–6 days of ecological momentary assessments, reporting on their positive and negative mood every 3 hours an…
The Perks of Pet Ownership? The Effects of Pet Ownership on Well-Being During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Pet ownership has often been lauded as a protective factor for well-being, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. We expanded this question to consider how pet (i.e., species, number) and owner (i.e., pet relationship quality, personality, attachment orientations) characteristics affected the association between pet ownership and well-being in a pre-registered mixed method analysis of 767 people assessed three times in May 2020. In our qualit…
Don’t Drag Me Down
There is a notable similarity in psychological well-being among romantic partners. Drawing on valence asymmetry research (e.g., negativity bias), we tested whether partners’ convergence toward a similar level of well-being is marked by the happier partner’s over-time deterioration or by the less happy partner’s over-time improvement. In two studies using nationally representative samples of German and Dutch couples ( N couples =21,894) followed f…
List Length, List Content, and Gratitude List Intervention Outcomes
Gratitude lists, well-being interventions in which participants list things that they are grateful for, have recently grown in popularity. However, being tasked with generating longer gratitude lists might backfire and be associated with less felt gratitude. Furthermore, the content of these gratitude lists is rarely examined. In three studies of 3,936 participants, people assigned to shorter length conditions (three items) were relatively compar…
Cultural moderation of demographic differences in narcissism
A social relations perspective on attachment orientations and judgments of relationship quality in friendships
Ink and Identity
Fibbing friends
Examining change in attachment in romantic couples
Attachment insecurity is associated with important relationship outcomes, well-being, and mental health. Attachment has long been considered a stable trait, but recent findings indicate that attachment insecurity decreases over time among adults in romantic relationships. Although theoretical considerations suggest that positive experiences within these relationships should contribute to changes in attachment, little is known about the specific c…
Demographic and Experiential Characteristics of Asexual Individuals and Associations with Well-Being
Actor, partner, and similarity effects of attachment anxiety and avoidance on well-being and health in romantic couples
Romantic attachment orientations are important predictors of individuals' and their partners' well-being and health. However, less is known about whether similarity in attachment between partners predicts better well-being and health outcomes. In two studies (total N couples = 1,602), we tested with actor-partner interdependence and dyadic polynomial regression models if partners' attachment and their similarity were linked to their well-being an…
Ready (for love) or not? Self and other perceptions of commitment readiness and associations with attachment orientations
Commitment readiness - feeling ready to be in a committed relationship - is conducive to romantic relationship initiation and maintenance. Further, friends' perceptions of whether someone is ready might constrain the opportunities afforded to individuals, and these perceptions may be shaped by how people navigate a romantic relationship, namely, attachment orientation. Hence, we examined the overlap of self and other perceptions of commitment rea…
Explicating narrow and broad conceptualizations of environmental influences on personality
BACKGROUND: A surge of studies aims to identify environmental factors that explain individual differences, personality stability, and personality development. This special issue builds on this large interest and solicited articles on broad and narrow environmental factors of personality. OBJECTIVE: We provide an overview of the motivations behind the special issue, review each of the articles, and present data on researchers' perceptions of envir…
Preclinical Dementia and Economic Well-Being Trajectories of Racially Diverse Older Adults
ObjectivesThis study examined the magnitude, changes, and racial/ethnic disparities in the economic costs of the 16-year preclinical phase of dementia-a period of cognitive decline without significant impact on daily activities. Methods: The study utilized two dementia algorithms to classify individuals with incident dementia in the Health and Retirement Study. These cases were compared to matched controls in terms of poverty status, labor force …
Attached to monogamy? Avoidance predicts willingness to engage (but not actual engagement) in consensual non-monogamy
People view monogamy as the optimal form of partnering and stigmatize consensual non-monogamous (CNM) relationships. Likewise, attachment researchers often equate romantic love (and security) with sexual exclusivity. Interestingly, a sizeable minority of people engage in CNM and report high levels of satisfaction. Across two studies, we examined how individual differences in attachment were associated with attitudes toward CNM, willingness to eng…
The Vicarious Effects of Discrimination
Little is known about how discriminatory experiences are associated with interpersonal relationships-specifically whether one person's experience of discrimination has psychological effects on their partner and their relationship (i.e., vicarious effects). Using dyadic data analyses, we examined actor and partner effects of discriminatory experiences on self-rated health, chronic illness, depression, and relationship strain in a sample of 1,949 c…
Differences in Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking Across 63 Countries
Cultural practices socialize people to relate to others in different ways. One critical way in which these interpersonal bonds are formed and maintained is via empathy, our emotional reactivity toward others' experiences. However, the extent to which individuals from different cultures vary in their dispositional empathy, and the correlates of these differences, are relatively unknown. Thus, the current study explored cultural variation in empath…
Death across the lifespan
Many studies have found age-related declines in death-related anxiety. Why do death-related thoughts and anxiety decline across the lifespan when exposure to, and likelihood of, death increase over time? In Study 1, a cross-sectional survey of 2,363 adults, death-related thoughts declined across the lifespan. In Study 2, a longitudinal study of 9,815 adults followed over a 4-year period, death anxiety declined across the lifespan. Further, greate…
Longitudinal actor, partner, and similarity effects of personality on well-being
The current study aimed to conceptually replicate previous studies on the effects of actor personality, partner personality, and personality similarity on general and relational well-being by using response surface analyses and a longitudinal sample of 4,464 romantic couples. Similar to previous studies using difference scores and profile correlations, results from response surface analyses indicated that personality similarity explained a small …
You have to follow through
Prior research has found that people's desires to change their personality traits predict corresponding subsequent trait growth over time. However, few studies have examined the processes through which people can volitionally change their personality traits. Thus, it remains unclear whether merely desiring change predicts trait growth or whether actively pursuing change is necessary. The present study was a 15-week intensive longitudinal design t…
Longitudinal changes in attachment orientation over a 59-year period
Research on individual differences in attachment-and their links to emotion, cognition, and behavior in close relationships-has proliferated over the last several decades. However, the majority of this research has focused on children and young adults. Little is known about mean-level changes in attachment orientation beyond early life, in part due to a dearth of longitudinal data on attachment across the life span. The current study used a Q-Sor…
Not all attachment relationships develop alike
Conceptualizing and Operationalizing Collaboration Among Multiple Caregivers of Older Adults
Results are examined in the context of care network dynamics and proposed mechanisms linking care collaboration to outcomes for caregivers and recipients. Strengths and limitations of our conceptualization and operationalization of collaboration are discussed
Actor, partner, and similarity effects of personality on global and experienced well-being
Age and gender differences in narcissism
Version IV, Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire-Short Form, Single-Item Narcissism Scale, and brief version of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory). The findings of Study 1 (N = 5,736) revealed heterogeneity in how strongly the measures are correlated. Some instruments loaded clearly on one of the three factors proposed by previous research (i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, Antagonism), while others cross-loaded across factors and…
The Effect of Social Network Size and Composition on the Link Between Discrimination and Health Among Sexual Minorities
Objectives: Previous research has examined the link between discrimination and health in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender (LGBT) individuals. The purpose of this study was to examine if health-promoting variables, like social networks, might disrupt this association. Method: Participants were 2,560 LGBT older adults who reported on the composition of their social network, level of discrimination, stress, and health/well-being. Results: …
Demographic, Experiential, and Temporal Variation in Ableism
Data from Project Implicit were analyzed to explore trends in ableism. Over 300,000 U.S. residents with and without disabilities completed the Disability Implicit Association Test and two measures of explicit prejudice. The most consistent predictors of bias across types of prejudice were gender and contact with individuals with disabilities: Women and those who had contact were less prejudiced. Temporal analyses indicated that mean implicit prej…
How do attachment styles change from childhood through adolescence? Findings from an accelerated longitudinal Cohort study
Changes in optimism and pessimism in response to life events
A national longitudinal dyadic analysis of spousal education and cognitive decline in the United States
A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the Covid-19 pandemic
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. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof an…
Geographic patterns of implicit age bias and associations with state‐level health outcomes across the United States
Negative attitudes toward aging are pervasive in society and may be detrimental to people's health as they become older. Older people tend to report feeling significantly younger than their chronological age, often as a way of psychologically distancing themselves from the stigma of old age. However, attitudes and behaviors toward aging may differ across regional contexts. We examined associations among state‐level patterns of bias against older …
Old dog, new tricks
Trait and facet personality similarity and relationship and life satisfaction in romantic couples
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample
Geographic variation in empathy
Linked Lives
Objectives: Mastery beliefs are known to contribute to healthy aging. However, it is an open question whether individual mastery-health associations impact the health of close long-term partners. Method: We applied actor-partner interdependence models to 4-wave, 6-year longitudinal dyadic data from married and cohabitating partners in the Health and Retirement Study (N = 1,981 partners; age at baseline: M = 67 years, SD = 8.93, range 50-94 years)…
From the Cradle to the Grave
OBJECTIVE: Although attachment dynamics are thought to be important across the life span, relatively few studies have examined attachment processes beyond young adulthood. Extant research on age differences in attachment orientation has yielded conflicting results and interpretations. The purpose of this study was to provide a more complete picture of age-related differences in attachment anxiety and avoidance. METHOD: We examined attachment anxi…
Age Differences in Romantic Attachment Around the World
The purpose of this study was to examine the potential universality of age differences in romantic attachment. Relatively few studies have investigated attachment processes beyond young adulthood and very little is known about age differences in romantic attachment orientations in geographic regions outside North America. We examined attachment anxiety and avoidance among 90,904 Internet respondents in 81 countries. Attachment anxiety was highest…
Maternal nurturance predicts decreases in attachment avoidance in emerging adulthood
Changes in Optimism Are Associated With Changes in Health Over Time Among Older Adults
Little is known about how optimism differs by age and changes over time, particularly among older adults. Even less is known about how changes in optimism are related to changes in physical health. We examined age differences and longitudinal changes in optimism in 9,790 older adults over a 4-year period. We found an inverted U-shaped pattern between optimism and age both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, such that optimism generally increase…
Prenatal hormones in first‐time expectant parents
OBJECTIVES: Expectant mothers experience marked hormone changes throughout the transition to parenthood. Although similar neuroendocrine pathways are thought to support maternal and paternal behavior, much less is known about prenatal hormone changes in expectant fathers, especially in humans. METHODS: We examined longitudinal changes in salivary testosterone, cortisol, estradiol, and progesterone in 29 first-time expectant couples (N = 58). Coup…
Not all attachment relationships develop alike
MLKDay and Racial Attitudes
Intuition suggests that theMartinLutherKing holiday (MLKDay) should improve racial attitudes toward African Americans. However, its influence may depend on whether African Americans are evaluated as a group or individually. In two studies, we assessed racial attitudes either onMLKDay or on a control day. As might be expected, participants had more sympathetic attitudes towards African Americans as a group onMLKDay compared to control days; howeve…
Attached to monogamy? Avoidance predicts willingness to engage (but not actual engagement) in consensual non-monogamy
People view monogamy as the optimal form of partnering and stigmatize consensual non-monogamous (CNM) relationships. Likewise, attachment researchers often equate romantic love (and security) with sexual exclusivity. Interestingly, a sizeable minority of people engage in CNM and report high levels of satisfaction. Across two studies, we examined how individual differences in attachment were associated with attitudes toward CNM, willingness to eng…
The Benefits of Social Technology Use Among Older Adults Are Mediated by Reduced Loneliness
Technology has the ability to enhance and enrich the lives of older adults by facilitating better interpersonal relationships. However, few studies have directly examined associations between technology use for social reasons and physical and psychological health among older adults. The current study examines the benefits of technology use in 591 older adults from the 2012 wave of the Health and Retirement Study (Mage = 68.18, SD = 10.75; 55.5% f…
Ideological Fit Enhances Interpersonal Orientations
Living among politically dissimilar others leads individuals to feel left out and ultimately predicts mobility away from an area. However, does living in politically incongruent environment affect how we relate to other people? In two national samples ( n = 12,846 and n = 6,316), the congruence between an individual’s ideological orientation and their community’s ideological orientation were examined. Lack of ideological fit with one’s environmen…
Linked Lives
Objectives: Mastery beliefs are known to contribute to healthy aging. However, it is an open question whether individual mastery-health associations impact the health of close long-term partners. Method: We applied actor-partner interdependence models to 4-wave, 6-year longitudinal dyadic data from married and cohabitating partners in the Health and Retirement Study (N = 1,981 partners; age at baseline: M = 67 years, SD = 8.93, range 50-94 years)…
Political orientation moderates worldview defense in response to Osama bin Laden’s death
The current study examines Americans' psychological responses to Osama bin Laden's death. We tracked changes in how different participants responded to dissimilar others from the night of bin Laden's death for five weeks. Liberal participants reported lower worldview defense (i.e., a defensive reaction to uphold one's cultural worldview) immediately after bin Laden's death but then returned to similar levels as their conservative counterparts ove…
Death across the lifespan
Many studies have found age-related declines in death-related anxiety. Why do death-related thoughts and anxiety decline across the lifespan when exposure to, and likelihood of, death increase over time? In Study 1, a cross-sectional survey of 2,363 adults, death-related thoughts declined across the lifespan. In Study 2, a longitudinal study of 9,815 adults followed over a 4-year period, death anxiety declined across the lifespan. Further, greate…
Change across the lifespan in a psychological measure of life history strategy
Associations among relational values, support, health, and well‐being across the adult lifespan
Is the link between close relationships and health and well‐being static across the lifespan, or are the benefits most evident in older adulthood, when concerns about physical health are greater? In Study 1, a cross‐sectional survey of 271,053 adults, valuing friendships was related to better functioning, particularly among older adults, whereas valuing familial relationships exerted a static influence on health and well‐being across the lifespan…
Geographic variation in empathy
Is Virginia for lovers? Geographic variation in adult attachment orientation
The Vicarious Effects of Discrimination
Little is known about how discriminatory experiences are associated with interpersonal relationships-specifically whether one person's experience of discrimination has psychological effects on their partner and their relationship (i.e., vicarious effects). Using dyadic data analyses, we examined actor and partner effects of discriminatory experiences on self-rated health, chronic illness, depression, and relationship strain in a sample of 1,949 c…
Differences in Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking Across 63 Countries
Cultural practices socialize people to relate to others in different ways. One critical way in which these interpersonal bonds are formed and maintained is via empathy, our emotional reactivity toward others' experiences. However, the extent to which individuals from different cultures vary in their dispositional empathy, and the correlates of these differences, are relatively unknown. Thus, the current study explored cultural variation in empath…
The Psychological Science Accelerator
Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. 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 t…
Personality change across the life span
Objective Personality traits are characterized by both stability and change across the life span. Many of the mechanisms hypothesized to cause personality change (e.g., the timing of various social roles, physical health, and cultural values) differ considerably across culture. Moreover, personality consistency is valued highly in Western societies, but less so in non‐Western societies. Few studies have examined how personality changes differentl…
Emerging Adulthood MoA/Idea-8 Scale Characteristics From Multiple Institutions
We tested psychometric properties of the Markers of Adulthood (MoA) importance scale and a revised Inventory of the Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood (IDEA-8) in a large, diverse multisite and multinational sample the Emerging Adulthood Measured at Multiple Institutions 2 project. We used multilevel confirmatory factor analyses and multilevel alphas to examine external validity and internal consistency of the scales. We also performed correlationa…
How do attachment styles change from childhood through adolescence? Findings from an accelerated longitudinal Cohort study
Is narcissism associated with baseline cortisol in men and women
Does personality change following spousal bereavement
Psychology (82 works) · Social Psychology (66 works) · Developmental psychology (55 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (30 works) · Medicine (27 works) · Personality (21 works) · Gerontology (18 works) · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction (17 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (16 works)