Lucas A Keefer
Biographic Data
| ID | 121699 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lucas A Keefer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lucas A |
| FAMILY NAME | Keefer |
| SIGNATURE | KEEFER L A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern Mississippi |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0700-6221 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 236 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-…
Who scapegoats? Individual differences moderate the dual-motive model of scapegoating
Whose metaphor? Rethinking conceptual metaphor in Lacanian terms
Recent research on the psychology of metaphor is based primarily on the cognitivist framework provided by conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). This approach has been generative and does much to explain the pervasive role that metaphoric language plays in everyday life. However, interest in metaphor is not limited to this cognitive approach; Lacan accorded metaphor a central role in his psychoanalytic understanding of the process o…
Chasing complexity in metaphor research
Thibodeau (2022) offers a thoughtful critique of my article (Keefer, 2022), attempting to bridge literatures on conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and Lacan’s theory of metaphor. In this response, I specifically address issues about the extent to which cognitivist alternatives are able to effectively address concerns about the reductiveness of metaphors in CMT. My view is that these approaches either make untenable assumptions about semantic value …
A Distant Ally
Research in Terror Management Theory finds that close interpersonal relationships (e.g., parents, romantic partners) mitigate threat reactions to reminders of mortality. Parasocial relationships (imagined relationships with media personalities) afford many of the same benefits as interpersonal relationships. Do these benefits extend to mortality concerns? We investigated whether those with strong parasocial attachments were differentially influen…
Meaningful outrage
Individuals are frequently exposed to media describing salient moral violations, often eliciting negative reactions. Three studies examined whether the outrage engendered by such news may serve as a source of personal meaning for justice sensitive individuals. Using an experience sampling method, Study 1 found that among high (but not low) justice sensitive individuals, outrage (but not sadness) at unethical/unjust news content predicted greater …
Building on a Solid Foundation
How do individuals manage to maintain strong emotional and personal relationships with God, despite the physical (and metaphysical) challenges posed by that task? Past studies show that individuals relate to God in characteristic ways based in part on their God concepts, the ways they internally represent the nature of God. The current manuscript summarizes research suggesting that these concepts arise in part through mapping processes involving …
Demonstrate values
Recent findings suggest that moral outrage signals trustworthiness to others, and such perceptions play a uniquely important role in identifying social opportunities. We conducted four studies (N = 870) investigating how displays of moral outrage are perceived in the specific context of mating. Results indicated participants, particularly women, found prospective mates describing outrage-signaling activism to be more desirable for long-term matin…
An initial investigation of the role of death concerns in evaluations of metaphoric language about God
Past research suggests that death pushes some individuals to strongly promote religious worldviews. The current work explores the role of conceptual metaphor in this process. Past research shows that metaphors can provide meaning and certainty, suggesting that death may therefore cause people to be more attracted to epistemically beneficial metaphoric descriptions of God. In three studies, we test this possibility against competing alternatives s…
Defensive Partisanship? Evidence that In‐Party Scandals Increase Out‐Party Hostility
Contemporary U.S. politics is characterized by polarization and interpartisan antipathy. This is accompanied by a media landscape saturated with coverage of political scandals. Applying a social identity perspective, we examined whether exposure to scandals that threaten partisan's moral group image (i.e., in‐party scandals), may motivate defensive hostility against opposing partisans. Across three experiments we exposed U.S. partisans to scandal…
Specific Phobias
Introduction: Drawing on existential psychology we examine the possibility that specific phobias can serve a psychological function. Specifically, we propose that phobic objects allow individuals to focalize anxieties about haphazard existential threats into a more manageable form, reducing perceptions of risk and bolstering control. Method: We tested this by assessing perceived control among participants with varying levels of spider fear who we…
Considering class
Past research in social psychology has explored the effects of considering a given policy or issue from different perspectives. In the case of political information, for example, this might mean thinking about broad systemic factors or values that cause an outcome or alternatively focusing on the local actors who are responsible for and/or affected by that system. In the present studies, we explore whether beliefs about systemic (vs. personal) fe…
Relational insecurity heightens sensitivity to limbal rings in partnered women
Limbal rings augment perceived facial health and attractiveness. We thus expected sensitivity to their presence would depend on motives to seek alternative relationship partners among those feeling insecure about a current pairbond. Despite partnered women's relative insensitivity to good gene cues, partnered women feeling relationally dissatisfied might heighten acuity toward limbal rings. We primed single and partnered women with secure or inse…
A brighter future
The present study serves as an exploratory investigation of the role of social class in responses to the threat of future debt. Previous work has shown that individuals of high and low subjective social class differ in the ways that they respond to a broad range of threats and uncertainties about the future. Across three studies, we found that lower social class individuals expect more future debt and suffer greater attendant stress than higher c…
Time-space distanciation
While researchers in social psychology often explore space and time in isolation, the relations between these dimensions are rarely considered. To address this gap, we explore a model of Time-Space Distanciation, the extent to space and time are abstracted from one another in the cultural coordination of activity. We introduce this construct with an emphasis on its interdisciplinary roots and its status as a feature of both group- and individual-…
Can false memory for critical lures occur without conscious awareness of list words
Attachment to God Uniquely Predicts Variation in Well-Being Outcomes
Prior research shows that one's relationship with God is often patterned on interpersonal attachment style. In other words, the expectations people have about the supportiveness of close others tend to color perceptions of God. Past research also shows that well-being corresponds with a more secure view of others in attachment relationships, both interpersonal and divine. This raises an important theoretical question: Are the associations between…
Righteous or self‐righteous anger? Justice sensitivity moderates defensive outrage at a third‐party harm‐doer
While bystanders' outrage over moral transgressions may represent a genuine desire to restore justice, such expressions can also be self‐serving—alleviating guilt and bolstering one's moral status. Four studies examined whether individual differences in observer justice sensitivity (JS O ) moderate the degree to which outrage at third‐party harm‐doing reflects concerns about one's own moral identity rather than justice per se. Among participants …
Status and Redistribution of Resources
On the road
In America, White and affluent middle-school students outperform minority students and those of low socioeconomic status on measures of academic performance. This achievement gap is partly attributable to differences in academic engagement. A promising strategy for engaging students is to elicit an academic possible identity: an image of oneself in the future as an accomplished student. Tests of this strategy’s efficacy show mixed results, howeve…
“Undoing” a Rhetorical Metaphor
Political metaphors do more than punch up messages; they can systematically bias observers’ attitudes toward the issue at hand. What, then, is an effective strategy for counteracting a metaphor’s influence? One could ignore or criticize the metaphor, emphasizing strong counterarguments directly pertaining to the target issue. Yet if observers rely on it to understand a complicated issue, they may be reluctant to abandon it. In this case, a “metap…
Group identity as a source of threat and means of compensation
Compensatory control theory proposes that individuals can assuage threatened personal control by endorsing external systems or agents that provide a sense that the world is meaningfully ordered. Recent research drawing on this perspective finds that one means by which individuals can compensate for a loss of control is adherence to ideological beliefs about the social world. This prior work, however, has largely neglected the role of social group…
When and why does belief in a controlling God strengthen goal commitment
Generalizing disposability
Four studies examined whether residential mobility ( RM ) leads people to view objects as disposable and, in turn, view social ties as disposable. Study 1 showed that tendencies to dispose of objects and social ties are related. Study 2 demonstrated that a history of RM increases the willingness to dispose of objects and, through that, dispose of social ties. Study 3 showed that increasing the sense of RM increases the willingness to dispose of o…
Time‐Space Distanciation
The growing body of research on temporal and spatial experience lacks a comprehensive theoretical approach. Drawing on Giddens’ framework, we present time‐space distanciation (TSD) as a construct for theorizing the relations between culture, time, and space. TSD in a culture may be understood as the extent to which (1) time and space are abstracted as separate dimensions and (2) activities are extended and organized across time and space. After p…
A metaphor-enriched social cognition
Social cognition is the scientific study of the cognitive events underlying social thought and attitudes. Currently, the field's prevailing theoretical perspectives are the traditional schema view and embodied cognition theories. Despite important differences, these perspectives share the seemingly uncontroversial notion that people interpret and evaluate a given social stimulus using knowledge about similar stimuli. However, research in cognitiv…
Evidence for the specificity of control motivations in worldview defense
A dual-motive model of scapegoating
The authors present a model that specifies 2 psychological motives underlying scapegoating, defined as attributing inordinate blame for a negative outcome to a target individual or group, (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over one's responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a negative outcome that otherwise seems inexplicab…
Epistemic motives moderate the effect of metaphoric framing on attitudes
Attachment to objects as compensation for close others' perceived unreliability
Defensive Partisanship? Evidence that In‐Party Scandals Increase Out‐Party Hostility
Contemporary U.S. politics is characterized by polarization and interpartisan antipathy. This is accompanied by a media landscape saturated with coverage of political scandals. Applying a social identity perspective, we examined whether exposure to scandals that threaten partisan's moral group image (i.e., in‐party scandals), may motivate defensive hostility against opposing partisans. Across three experiments we exposed U.S. partisans to scandal…
A Compensatory Control Account of Meritocracy
Why are people motivated to support social systems that claim to distribute resources based on hard work and effort, even when those systems seem unfair? Recent research on compensatory control shows that lowered perceptions of personal control motivate a greater endorsement of external systems (e.g., God, government) that compensate for a lack of personal control. The present studies demonstrate that U.S. citizens’ faith in a popular economic id…
Embodied metaphor and abstract problem solving
Exploring metaphor's epistemic function
The college journey and academic engagement
People commonly talk about goals metaphorically as destinations on physical paths extending into the future or as contained in future periods. Does metaphor use have consequences for people's motivation to engage in goal-directed action? Three experiments examine the effect of metaphor use on students' engagement with their academic possible identity: their image of themselves as academically successful graduates. Students primed to frame their a…
When and why does belief in a controlling God strengthen goal commitment
Time-space distanciation
While researchers in social psychology often explore space and time in isolation, the relations between these dimensions are rarely considered. To address this gap, we explore a model of Time-Space Distanciation, the extent to space and time are abstracted from one another in the cultural coordination of activity. We introduce this construct with an emphasis on its interdisciplinary roots and its status as a feature of both group- and individual-…
Subjectivity uncertainty theory of objectification
Meaningful outrage
Individuals are frequently exposed to media describing salient moral violations, often eliciting negative reactions. Three studies examined whether the outrage engendered by such news may serve as a source of personal meaning for justice sensitive individuals. Using an experience sampling method, Study 1 found that among high (but not low) justice sensitive individuals, outrage (but not sadness) at unethical/unjust news content predicted greater …
Time‐Space Distanciation
The growing body of research on temporal and spatial experience lacks a comprehensive theoretical approach. Drawing on Giddens’ framework, we present time‐space distanciation (TSD) as a construct for theorizing the relations between culture, time, and space. TSD in a culture may be understood as the extent to which (1) time and space are abstracted as separate dimensions and (2) activities are extended and organized across time and space. After p…
Perceived importance of cross-race targets facilitates recall
The cross-race effect (CRE) is the tendency to remember same-race (SR) faces better than cross-race (CR) faces. While there has been debate about the causes of the CRE, recent perspectives suggest that a lack of motivation to remember CR faces causes this effect. We provide direct support for this model across two studies manipulating the perceived importance of target faces. In Study 1 participants were outcome-dependent on a Black or White rese…
Righteous or self‐righteous anger? Justice sensitivity moderates defensive outrage at a third‐party harm‐doer
While bystanders' outrage over moral transgressions may represent a genuine desire to restore justice, such expressions can also be self‐serving—alleviating guilt and bolstering one's moral status. Four studies examined whether individual differences in observer justice sensitivity (JS O ) moderate the degree to which outrage at third‐party harm‐doing reflects concerns about one's own moral identity rather than justice per se. Among participants …
Group identity as a source of threat and means of compensation
Compensatory control theory proposes that individuals can assuage threatened personal control by endorsing external systems or agents that provide a sense that the world is meaningfully ordered. Recent research drawing on this perspective finds that one means by which individuals can compensate for a loss of control is adherence to ideological beliefs about the social world. This prior work, however, has largely neglected the role of social group…
Toward a Psychological Study of Class Consciousness
While social class has recently become a prominent topic in social psychological research, much of this effort has focused on the psychological consequences of objective and subjective indices of class (e.g., income, perceived status). This approach sheds light on the consequences of social class itself, but overlooks a construct of central importance in earlier theorizing on class: class consciousness, or the extent to which individuals acknowle…
Building on a Solid Foundation
How do individuals manage to maintain strong emotional and personal relationships with God, despite the physical (and metaphysical) challenges posed by that task? Past studies show that individuals relate to God in characteristic ways based in part on their God concepts, the ways they internally represent the nature of God. The current manuscript summarizes research suggesting that these concepts arise in part through mapping processes involving …
A brighter future
The present study serves as an exploratory investigation of the role of social class in responses to the threat of future debt. Previous work has shown that individuals of high and low subjective social class differ in the ways that they respond to a broad range of threats and uncertainties about the future. Across three studies, we found that lower social class individuals expect more future debt and suffer greater attendant stress than higher c…
Mapping the Great Recession
Commentators agree that the crisis that boiled to a bubble in the fall of 2008 (“the Great Recession”) is the gravest downturn since the depression of the 1930s. That makes it one of the two greatest crises in the history of capitalism. And plainly, the crisis continues, yielding severe joblessness and a growing danger of government defaults, bank failures, and stock market crashes. Hundreds of commentators have sought to explain the crisis. Yet …
A metaphor-enriched social cognition
Social cognition is the scientific study of the cognitive events underlying social thought and attitudes. Currently, the field's prevailing theoretical perspectives are the traditional schema view and embodied cognition theories. Despite important differences, these perspectives share the seemingly uncontroversial notion that people interpret and evaluate a given social stimulus using knowledge about similar stimuli. However, research in cognitiv…
Wringing the perceptual rags
We Landau, Meier, & Keefer (2010) reviewed a growing body of research demonstrating metaphors' far-reaching influence on social information processing. In their commentary, IJzerman and Koole (2011) claimed that we devoted insufficient attention to the origin of metaphors, and they reviewed research showing that bodily, social, and cultural experiences constrain metaphor development. Given the focus of our article and the tone of our admittedly c…
Evidence for the specificity of control motivations in worldview defense
Exploring metaphor's epistemic function
Mapping the Great Recession
Commentators agree that the crisis that boiled to a bubble in the fall of 2008 (“the Great Recession”) is the gravest downturn since the depression of the 1930s. That makes it one of the two greatest crises in the history of capitalism. And plainly, the crisis continues, yielding severe joblessness and a growing danger of government defaults, bank failures, and stock market crashes. Hundreds of commentators have sought to explain the crisis. Yet …
Perceived importance of cross-race targets facilitates recall
The cross-race effect (CRE) is the tendency to remember same-race (SR) faces better than cross-race (CR) faces. While there has been debate about the causes of the CRE, recent perspectives suggest that a lack of motivation to remember CR faces causes this effect. We provide direct support for this model across two studies manipulating the perceived importance of target faces. In Study 1 participants were outcome-dependent on a Black or White rese…
Subjectivity uncertainty theory of objectification
Attachment to objects as compensation for close others' perceived unreliability
A dual-motive model of scapegoating
The authors present a model that specifies 2 psychological motives underlying scapegoating, defined as attributing inordinate blame for a negative outcome to a target individual or group, (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over one's responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a negative outcome that otherwise seems inexplicab…
A Compensatory Control Account of Meritocracy
Why are people motivated to support social systems that claim to distribute resources based on hard work and effort, even when those systems seem unfair? Recent research on compensatory control shows that lowered perceptions of personal control motivate a greater endorsement of external systems (e.g., God, government) that compensate for a lack of personal control. The present studies demonstrate that U.S. citizens’ faith in a popular economic id…
Epistemic motives moderate the effect of metaphoric framing on attitudes
Embodied metaphor and abstract problem solving
The college journey and academic engagement
People commonly talk about goals metaphorically as destinations on physical paths extending into the future or as contained in future periods. Does metaphor use have consequences for people's motivation to engage in goal-directed action? Three experiments examine the effect of metaphor use on students' engagement with their academic possible identity: their image of themselves as academically successful graduates. Students primed to frame their a…
Frighteningly Similar
Messages in public discourse commonly employ metaphors to describe abstract sociopolitical issues in terms of unrelated concepts. In prior research, exposure to such metaphoric messages influences attitudes. The current research tests the novel possibility that metaphor exposure can elicit defensive avoidance of otherwise benign information. We build on the evidence that individuals with avoidant attachment style avoid thinking about close relati…
Divergent Effects of Metaphoric Company Logos
Many corporate logos use pictorial metaphors to influence consumer attitudes. Priming concrete concepts—by means of logo exposure or other procedures—changes attitudes toward dissimilar abstract targets in metaphor-consistent ways. It is assumed, however, that observers apply a logo’s metaphor externally to interpret the company and its service. This research examined the possibility that observers may instead apply that metaphor internally to in…
Toward a Psychological Study of Class Consciousness
While social class has recently become a prominent topic in social psychological research, much of this effort has focused on the psychological consequences of objective and subjective indices of class (e.g., income, perceived status). This approach sheds light on the consequences of social class itself, but overlooks a construct of central importance in earlier theorizing on class: class consciousness, or the extent to which individuals acknowle…
Generalizing disposability
Four studies examined whether residential mobility ( RM ) leads people to view objects as disposable and, in turn, view social ties as disposable. Study 1 showed that tendencies to dispose of objects and social ties are related. Study 2 demonstrated that a history of RM increases the willingness to dispose of objects and, through that, dispose of social ties. Study 3 showed that increasing the sense of RM increases the willingness to dispose of o…
Time‐Space Distanciation
The growing body of research on temporal and spatial experience lacks a comprehensive theoretical approach. Drawing on Giddens’ framework, we present time‐space distanciation (TSD) as a construct for theorizing the relations between culture, time, and space. TSD in a culture may be understood as the extent to which (1) time and space are abstracted as separate dimensions and (2) activities are extended and organized across time and space. After p…
Status and Redistribution of Resources
On the road
In America, White and affluent middle-school students outperform minority students and those of low socioeconomic status on measures of academic performance. This achievement gap is partly attributable to differences in academic engagement. A promising strategy for engaging students is to elicit an academic possible identity: an image of oneself in the future as an accomplished student. Tests of this strategy’s efficacy show mixed results, howeve…
“Undoing” a Rhetorical Metaphor
Political metaphors do more than punch up messages; they can systematically bias observers’ attitudes toward the issue at hand. What, then, is an effective strategy for counteracting a metaphor’s influence? One could ignore or criticize the metaphor, emphasizing strong counterarguments directly pertaining to the target issue. Yet if observers rely on it to understand a complicated issue, they may be reluctant to abandon it. In this case, a “metap…
Group identity as a source of threat and means of compensation
Compensatory control theory proposes that individuals can assuage threatened personal control by endorsing external systems or agents that provide a sense that the world is meaningfully ordered. Recent research drawing on this perspective finds that one means by which individuals can compensate for a loss of control is adherence to ideological beliefs about the social world. This prior work, however, has largely neglected the role of social group…
When and why does belief in a controlling God strengthen goal commitment
Can false memory for critical lures occur without conscious awareness of list words
Attachment to God Uniquely Predicts Variation in Well-Being Outcomes
Prior research shows that one's relationship with God is often patterned on interpersonal attachment style. In other words, the expectations people have about the supportiveness of close others tend to color perceptions of God. Past research also shows that well-being corresponds with a more secure view of others in attachment relationships, both interpersonal and divine. This raises an important theoretical question: Are the associations between…
Psychology (39 works) · Social Psychology (33 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (18 works) · Social Psychology (18 works) · Epistemology (16 works) · Perception (15 works) · Linguistics (14 works) · Metaphor (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Cognitive psychology (12 works)