Allen R Mcconnell
Biographic Data
| ID | 130190 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Allen R Mcconnell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Allen R |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcconnell |
| SIGNATURE | MCCONNELL A R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Miami University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0827-7795 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 593 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
How Should I Feel About This? Investigating the Emotions and Processes Involved in Indulging in Guilty Pleasures
Many circumstances trigger mixed feelings, and understanding how people navigate ambivalent affective states sheds light on how social motivations guide behavior. We adopted a discrete, functionalist account of emotion to explore the positive and negative emotions experienced when indulging in guilty pleasures (GPs) and how these outcomes implicate cognitive dissonance and self-presentation processes. Study 1 randomly assigned participants to ref…
Aligning Climate‐Energy Policies With Citizen Beliefs, Scientific Findings, Health and Economic Benefits, and Geopolitical Stability
Recent and abrupt deviations in U.S. climate and energy policies are shifting the United States away from a more sustainable future toward greater fossil‐fuel use that will accelerate global warming. These new priorities go against the wishes of the American people as measured by many nationally representative surveys, and they ignore the scientific consensus regarding climate change and its deleterious consequences. This new agenda will harm the…
Furry Friends: Direct and Indirect Benefits of Human‐Animal Relationships on Well‐Being
In this paper, we review the positive consequences of people's connections with companion animals. Specifically, we examine the direct benefits of these relationships, documenting how animals improve people's lives by providing social support, promoting better health, reducing stress, increasing resilience, and enhancing rehabilitation following injury. These benefits are realized in many ways, ranging from the consequences of viewing pets as fam…
Blinded by wistfulness: On how nostalgia strengthens attitudes
Across four studies, we explored how feeling nostalgic about an attitude object impacts the metacognitive characteristics of the attitude toward that object and how those metacognitions predict the evaluation's underlying strength. In each study, participants reflected on and evaluated a song or television show that either did or did not elicit nostalgia. Across these studies, we found support for the hypotheses that nostalgic attitude objects ar…
Nature’s Best Friend: Viewing Pets as Having Greater Emotional Experience Increases Ecological Concern
Human-caused environmental problems, such as climate change, affect the lives of both human and nonhuman animals, underscoring the importance of increasing pro-environmental action. The "Pets-As-Ambassadors" hypothesis proposes that care for companion animals may lead to concern for other animals and for nature more generally, but little research has examined the attributional processes underlying this effect or how these mechanisms may increase …
Race Deficits in Pain Detection: Medical Providers and Laypeople Fail to Accurately Perceive Pain Authenticity Among Black People
Across six studies ( N = 904), we suggest a novel mechanism for race disparities in pain treatment: Perceiver deficits in discriminating real from fake pain for Black (relative to White) individuals. Across Studies 1–4, White participants (Studies 1–4) and Black participants (Study 2) were better at discerning authentic from inauthentic pain expressions for White targets than for Black targets. This effect emerged for both subtle (Studies 1 and 2…
We Are Family: Viewing Pets as Family Members Improves Wellbeing
The current work investigated how viewing one’s pet as a family member improves wellbeing. We hypothesized that including pets in a key social ingroup (i.e., family) would increase ascriptions of socially supportive traits to these animals, enhancing their perceived ability to provide social support to owners, which in turn promotes owner wellbeing. Study 1 used a correlational design and showed positive relations between viewing one’s companion …
Families as ingroups that provide social resources: Implications for well-being
In six studies, we examined how properties of families as ingroups (i.e., group value, entitativity, and identification) enhance well-being, leveraging the Model of Ingroups as Social Resources (MISR). In correlational studies involving college students (Study 1) and older adults (Study 2), people experienced greater well-being when they reported that their families were greater in group value, entitativity, and identification. Studies 3–5 manipu…
Family as a source of support under stress: Benefits of greater breadth of family inclusion
Family has profound meaning and represents the most important ingroup for most people, yet, we know very little about how lay perceptions of family affect well-being. In the current work, we examined how lay theories about breadth of family inclusion (i.e., including a broader variety of entities in one’s definition of family) were related to family experiences and to well-being. In Study 1, we found that lay theories about family as including a …
Thinking about Cats or Dogs Provides Relief from Social Rejection
Past research shows that anthropomorphizing animals and nonhuman objects is correlated with unmet social needs (e.g., loneliness), and momentary feelings of social rejection can be soothed by thinking about a pet or by having a dog nearby. The current work tested whether thinking of names for cats and dogs improves wellbeing after social rejection, as well as whether this phenomenon occurs because of a unique quality of animals or because of anth…
Between two selves: Comparing global and local predictors of speed of switching between self-aspects
Self-concepts are composed of multiple self-aspects that vary in their momentary accessibility. When a particular self-aspect is active, it guides one’s cognition and behavior in a context-specific fashion. The current research quantified the ease with which people switch from one active self-aspect to another using a novel reaction time approach. Specifically, two studies tested how self-aspect switching speed is influenced by global (i.e., self…
Update on SPPS
Interpersonal sensitivity and self-knowledge: Those chronic for trustworthiness are more accurate at detecting it in others
The Multiple Self-Aspects Framework: Self-Concept Representation and Its Implications
The multiple self-aspects framework (MSF) conceives of the self-concept as a collection of multiple, context-dependent selves. From this perspective, five principles are derived, addressing issues such as how context activates particular regions of self-knowledge and how self-relevant feedback affects self-evaluations and affect. Support for these principles is discussed. Furthermore, the MSF advances several novel predictions, including how acti…
Discrepancy-based and anticipated emotions in behavioral self-regulation
Discrepancies between one's current and desired states evoke negative emotions, which presumably guide self-regulation. In the current work we evaluated the function of discrepancy-based emotions in behavioral self-regulation. Contrary to classic theories of self-regulation, discrepancy-based emotions did not predict the degree to which people engaged in self-regulatory behavior. Instead, expectations about how future self-discrepancies would mak…
Blind spots in the search for happiness: Implicit attitudes and nonverbal leakage predict affective forecasting errors
Friends with benefits: On the positive consequences of pet ownership
Social support is critical for psychological and physical well-being, reflecting the centrality of belongingness in our lives. Human interactions often provide people with considerable social support, but can pets also fulfill one's social needs? Although there is correlational evidence that pets may help individuals facing significant life stressors, little is known about the well-being benefits of pets for everyday people. Study 1 found in a co…
Dissonance averted: Self-concept organization moderates the effect of hypocrisy on attitude change
On the experience of self-relevant feedback: How self-concept organization influences affective responses and self-evaluations
Seeing close others as we see ourselves: One’s own self-complexity is reflected in perceptions of meaningful others
Multiple social identities and stereotype threat: Imbalance, accessibility, and working memory
In 4 experiments, the authors showed that concurrently making positive and negative self-relevant stereotypes available about performance in the same ability domain can eliminate stereotype threat effects. Replicating past work, the authors demonstrated that introducing negative stereotypes about women's math performance activated participants' female social identity and hurt their math performance (i.e., stereotype threat) by reducing working me…
Effort or Escape: Self-concept Structure Determines Self-regulatory Behavior
The current research examined the interaction between self-complexity, affect, and perceived goal attainability on self-regulation. Participants received failure feedback about their performance and were given the opportunity to reduce this discrepancy through practice. Greater self-complexity was associated with greater practice, regardless of affect and perceived effectiveness of practice. Lower self-complexity was only associated with greater …
Consequences of discrepant explicit and implicit attitudes: Cognitive dissonance and increased information processing
Forming implicit and explicit attitudes toward individuals: Social group association cues
The authors explored how social group cues (e.g., obesity, physical attractiveness) strongly associated with valence affect the formation of attitudes toward individuals. Although explicit attitude formation has been examined in much past research (e.g., S. T. Fiske & S. L. Neuberg, 1990), in the current work, the authors considered how implicit as well as explicit attitudes toward individuals are influenced by these cues. On the basis of a syste…
Implicit and explicit attitudes respond differently to increasing amounts of counterattitudinal information
This research examined the processes by which explicit and implicit attitudes changed to systematically differing levels of counterattitudinal (CA) information. Explicit attitudes changed quickly in response to relatively small amounts of CA information, reflecting rule‐based reasoning. On the other hand, implicit attitudes changed more slowly in the face of CA information, reflecting the progressive accretion of evaluation‐attitude object pairin…
Relations among the Implicit Association Test, Discriminatory Behavior, and Explicit Measures of Racial Attitudes
Friends with benefits: On the positive consequences of pet ownership
Social support is critical for psychological and physical well-being, reflecting the centrality of belongingness in our lives. Human interactions often provide people with considerable social support, but can pets also fulfill one's social needs? Although there is correlational evidence that pets may help individuals facing significant life stressors, little is known about the well-being benefits of pets for everyday people. Study 1 found in a co…
Understanding implicit and explicit attitude change: A systems of reasoning analysis
There is considerable controversy about how to conceptualize implicit and explicit attitudes, reflecting substantial speculation about the mechanisms involved in implicit and explicit attitude formation and change. To investigate this issue, the current work examines the processes by which new attitudes are formed and changed and how these attitudes predict behavior. Five experiments support a systems of reasoning approach to implicit and explici…
We Are Family: Viewing Pets as Family Members Improves Wellbeing
The current work investigated how viewing one’s pet as a family member improves wellbeing. We hypothesized that including pets in a key social ingroup (i.e., family) would increase ascriptions of socially supportive traits to these animals, enhancing their perceived ability to provide social support to owners, which in turn promotes owner wellbeing. Study 1 used a correlational design and showed positive relations between viewing one’s companion …
Target entitativity: Implications for information processing about individual and group targets
It is hypothesized that perceptions of entitativity (i.e., seeing social targets as possessing unity and coherence) have important implications for how one organizes information about, and forms impressions of, individual and group targets. When perceivers expect entitativity, they should form an integrated impression of the target, resulting in on-line judgments. However, when perceivers expect little entitativity, they should not process target…
Illusory correlation in the perception of groups: An extension of the distinctiveness-based account
The prevailing explanation for illusory correlation in the stereotyping of groups is that distinctive information (minority groups' infrequent behaviors) is salient, receives enhanced encoding, and becomes highly accessible, thus biasing subsequent judgments. This distinctiveness-based explanation (DBE) depends on information distinctiveness at the time of its encoding. Information distinctiveness at encoding was manipulated, while ultimate disti…
On-line and memory-based aspects of individual and group target judgments
Ss were given instruction sets to induce either on-line or memory-based processing while reading behavioral statements about individual and group targets. Impression-set instructions induced online judgments, and comprehensibility-set (comp) instructions induced memory-based judgments regardless of target type. More important, with nondirective instructions (memory set), natural differences in processing information about individuals and groups w…
Consequences of discrepant explicit and implicit attitudes: Cognitive dissonance and increased information processing
Multiple social identities and stereotype threat: Imbalance, accessibility, and working memory
In 4 experiments, the authors showed that concurrently making positive and negative self-relevant stereotypes available about performance in the same ability domain can eliminate stereotype threat effects. Replicating past work, the authors demonstrated that introducing negative stereotypes about women's math performance activated participants' female social identity and hurt their math performance (i.e., stereotype threat) by reducing working me…
Implicit and explicit attitudes respond differently to increasing amounts of counterattitudinal information
This research examined the processes by which explicit and implicit attitudes changed to systematically differing levels of counterattitudinal (CA) information. Explicit attitudes changed quickly in response to relatively small amounts of CA information, reflecting rule‐based reasoning. On the other hand, implicit attitudes changed more slowly in the face of CA information, reflecting the progressive accretion of evaluation‐attitude object pairin…
Forming implicit and explicit attitudes toward individuals: Social group association cues
The authors explored how social group cues (e.g., obesity, physical attractiveness) strongly associated with valence affect the formation of attitudes toward individuals. Although explicit attitude formation has been examined in much past research (e.g., S. T. Fiske & S. L. Neuberg, 1990), in the current work, the authors considered how implicit as well as explicit attitudes toward individuals are influenced by these cues. On the basis of a syste…
Implicit Theories: Consequences for Social Judgments of Individuals
Whose self is it anyway? Self-aspect control moderates the relation between self-complexity and well-being
Thinking about Cats or Dogs Provides Relief from Social Rejection
Past research shows that anthropomorphizing animals and nonhuman objects is correlated with unmet social needs (e.g., loneliness), and momentary feelings of social rejection can be soothed by thinking about a pet or by having a dog nearby. The current work tested whether thinking of names for cats and dogs improves wellbeing after social rejection, as well as whether this phenomenon occurs because of a unique quality of animals or because of anth…
The Mediating Effects of Attitudes Toward Homosexuality Between Secure Attachment and Disclosure Outcomes Among Gay Men
Past research has found that a stronger secure attachment style, developed in childhood, enhances one's ability to acknowledge negative feelings, cope with negative life events, and develop satisfying social relationships. Because an integral part of the "coming out" process for gay men is the ability to seek support from the gay community in order to reevaluate negative beliefs toward homosexuality, a gay man's attachment style may strongly impa…
Reactance, Compliance, and Anticipated Regret
Organization of the Self-Concept and the Suppression of Self-Relevant Thoughts
On the experience of self-relevant feedback: How self-concept organization influences affective responses and self-evaluations
Within-target illusory correlations and the formation of context-dependent attitudes
Two experiments explored the formation of context-dependent attitudes about a single social target. One such mechanism for the development of differential attitudes toward a target in different contexts is illusory correlation formation. It was proposed that within-target illusory correlations (i.e., perceiving unwarranted associations between salient target behaviors and distinctive domains in which the target is observed) can result in biased e…
Dissonance averted: Self-concept organization moderates the effect of hypocrisy on attitude change
Nature’s Best Friend: Viewing Pets as Having Greater Emotional Experience Increases Ecological Concern
Human-caused environmental problems, such as climate change, affect the lives of both human and nonhuman animals, underscoring the importance of increasing pro-environmental action. The "Pets-As-Ambassadors" hypothesis proposes that care for companion animals may lead to concern for other animals and for nature more generally, but little research has examined the attributional processes underlying this effect or how these mechanisms may increase …
Expectations of consistency about the self: Consequences for self-concept formation
Seeing close others as we see ourselves: One’s own self-complexity is reflected in perceptions of meaningful others
Women, sex, hostility, power, and suspicion: Sexually aggressive men’s cognitive associations
Aligning Climate‐Energy Policies With Citizen Beliefs, Scientific Findings, Health and Economic Benefits, and Geopolitical Stability
Recent and abrupt deviations in U.S. climate and energy policies are shifting the United States away from a more sustainable future toward greater fossil‐fuel use that will accelerate global warming. These new priorities go against the wishes of the American people as measured by many nationally representative surveys, and they ignore the scientific consensus regarding climate change and its deleterious consequences. This new agenda will harm the…
Illusory correlation in the perception of groups: An extension of the distinctiveness-based account
The prevailing explanation for illusory correlation in the stereotyping of groups is that distinctive information (minority groups' infrequent behaviors) is salient, receives enhanced encoding, and becomes highly accessible, thus biasing subsequent judgments. This distinctiveness-based explanation (DBE) depends on information distinctiveness at the time of its encoding. Information distinctiveness at encoding was manipulated, while ultimate disti…
On-line and memory-based aspects of individual and group target judgments
Ss were given instruction sets to induce either on-line or memory-based processing while reading behavioral statements about individual and group targets. Impression-set instructions induced online judgments, and comprehensibility-set (comp) instructions induced memory-based judgments regardless of target type. More important, with nondirective instructions (memory set), natural differences in processing information about individuals and groups w…
Within-target illusory correlations and the formation of context-dependent attitudes
Two experiments explored the formation of context-dependent attitudes about a single social target. One such mechanism for the development of differential attitudes toward a target in different contexts is illusory correlation formation. It was proposed that within-target illusory correlations (i.e., perceiving unwarranted associations between salient target behaviors and distinctive domains in which the target is observed) can result in biased e…
Target entitativity: Implications for information processing about individual and group targets
It is hypothesized that perceptions of entitativity (i.e., seeing social targets as possessing unity and coherence) have important implications for how one organizes information about, and forms impressions of, individual and group targets. When perceivers expect entitativity, they should form an integrated impression of the target, resulting in on-line judgments. However, when perceivers expect little entitativity, they should not process target…
Implicit Theories: Consequences for Social Judgments of Individuals
Relations among the Implicit Association Test, Discriminatory Behavior, and Explicit Measures of Racial Attitudes
Expectations of consistency about the self: Consequences for self-concept formation
Organization of the Self-Concept and the Suppression of Self-Relevant Thoughts
Reactance, Compliance, and Anticipated Regret
Do Racial Minorities Respond in the Same Way to Mainstream Beauty Standards? Social Comparison Processes in Asian, Black, and White Women
Some members of stigmatized groups, such as Asian women, may be more likely to experience negative self-evaluations after exposure to a mainstream beauty standard than members of other stigmatized groups, such as Black women. In this study, 54 Asian women, 52 Black women, and 64 White women, were exposed to mainstream standards of beauty and compared themselves to these idealized images. It was hypothesized that although Black women would find th…
Women, sex, hostility, power, and suspicion: Sexually aggressive men’s cognitive associations
Jealousy and commitment: Perceived threat and the effect of relationship alternatives
Most research on jealousy has focused on the correlation between one psychological factor and jealousy. In contrast, the current work examined how the link between relationship commitment and jealousy depends on the interplay of two situational factors: attractiveness of relationship alternatives and receiving threatening information about the self and the romantic relationship. In two studies, participants completed measures of relationship comm…
Whose self is it anyway? Self-aspect control moderates the relation between self-complexity and well-being
The Mediating Effects of Attitudes Toward Homosexuality Between Secure Attachment and Disclosure Outcomes Among Gay Men
Past research has found that a stronger secure attachment style, developed in childhood, enhances one's ability to acknowledge negative feelings, cope with negative life events, and develop satisfying social relationships. Because an integral part of the "coming out" process for gay men is the ability to seek support from the gay community in order to reevaluate negative beliefs toward homosexuality, a gay man's attachment style may strongly impa…
Wanting to be better but thinking you can't: Implicit theories of personality moderate the impact of self-discrepancies on self-esteem
Two studies examined the role of implicit theories of personality in the relation between actual – ideal self-discrepancies and self-esteem. Replicating previous work, we found that those with greater actual – ideal self-discrepancies reported lower self-esteem. Moreover, we hypothesized that this outcome would be especially stronger for those possessing an entity theory of personality (i.e., believing that personality is relatively fixed and unc…
Understanding implicit and explicit attitude change: A systems of reasoning analysis
There is considerable controversy about how to conceptualize implicit and explicit attitudes, reflecting substantial speculation about the mechanisms involved in implicit and explicit attitude formation and change. To investigate this issue, the current work examines the processes by which new attitudes are formed and changed and how these attitudes predict behavior. Five experiments support a systems of reasoning approach to implicit and explici…
Implicit and explicit attitudes respond differently to increasing amounts of counterattitudinal information
This research examined the processes by which explicit and implicit attitudes changed to systematically differing levels of counterattitudinal (CA) information. Explicit attitudes changed quickly in response to relatively small amounts of CA information, reflecting rule‐based reasoning. On the other hand, implicit attitudes changed more slowly in the face of CA information, reflecting the progressive accretion of evaluation‐attitude object pairin…
Effort or Escape: Self-concept Structure Determines Self-regulatory Behavior
The current research examined the interaction between self-complexity, affect, and perceived goal attainability on self-regulation. Participants received failure feedback about their performance and were given the opportunity to reduce this discrepancy through practice. Greater self-complexity was associated with greater practice, regardless of affect and perceived effectiveness of practice. Lower self-complexity was only associated with greater …
Consequences of discrepant explicit and implicit attitudes: Cognitive dissonance and increased information processing
Forming implicit and explicit attitudes toward individuals: Social group association cues
The authors explored how social group cues (e.g., obesity, physical attractiveness) strongly associated with valence affect the formation of attitudes toward individuals. Although explicit attitude formation has been examined in much past research (e.g., S. T. Fiske & S. L. Neuberg, 1990), in the current work, the authors considered how implicit as well as explicit attitudes toward individuals are influenced by these cues. On the basis of a syste…
Dissonance averted: Self-concept organization moderates the effect of hypocrisy on attitude change
On the experience of self-relevant feedback: How self-concept organization influences affective responses and self-evaluations
Seeing close others as we see ourselves: One’s own self-complexity is reflected in perceptions of meaningful others
Multiple social identities and stereotype threat: Imbalance, accessibility, and working memory
In 4 experiments, the authors showed that concurrently making positive and negative self-relevant stereotypes available about performance in the same ability domain can eliminate stereotype threat effects. Replicating past work, the authors demonstrated that introducing negative stereotypes about women's math performance activated participants' female social identity and hurt their math performance (i.e., stereotype threat) by reducing working me…
The Multiple Self-Aspects Framework: Self-Concept Representation and Its Implications
The multiple self-aspects framework (MSF) conceives of the self-concept as a collection of multiple, context-dependent selves. From this perspective, five principles are derived, addressing issues such as how context activates particular regions of self-knowledge and how self-relevant feedback affects self-evaluations and affect. Support for these principles is discussed. Furthermore, the MSF advances several novel predictions, including how acti…
Psychology (39 works) · Social Psychology (35 works) · Social Psychology (26 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (22 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (17 works) · Cognitive psychology (15 works) · Perception (15 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (14 works) · Cognition (12 works) · Developmental psychology (12 works)