Clayton R Critcher
Biographic Data
| ID | 169550 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Clayton R Critcher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Clayton R |
| FAMILY NAME | Critcher |
| SIGNATURE | CRITCHER C R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Absolute moral perceptions of the self and others: People are bad, a person is good, I am great
For decades, psychologists have appreciated that the average person sees themselves as better than average, particularly in moral domains. Although self-other comparisons permit establishing normative violations, they leave unanswered whether people see themselves and others positively or negatively in an absolute sense. The present research introduces a novel measure of moral thresholds to identify the behavioral tipping point that subjectively …
Moving beyond the belief–behavior correlation question: Decision contexts facilitate beliefs' effects on behavior
Specific beliefs do not correlate with seemingly relevant behaviors for many reasons. Such correlations may be low even when beliefs perfectly cause behavior (e.g., because multiple beliefs compete for influence, because beliefs have various behavioral outlets). A belief may be a necessary precursor to, but not a guarantee of, a behavior. And most critically, belief–behavior correlations may depend on the context in which behavioral decisions are…
Evaluations are inherently comparative, but are compared to what
Understanding how objective quantities are translated into subjective evaluations has long been of interest to social scientists, medical professionals, and policymakers with an interest in how people process and act on quantitative information. The theory of decision by sampling proposes a comparative procedure: Values seem larger or smaller based on how they rank in a comparison set, the decision sample. But what values are included in this dec…
Needing everything (or just one thing) to go right: Myopic preferences for consolidating or spreading risks
Succeeding at a task often depends on the success or failure of component events. Such multicomponent risks can take one of two general forms. Disjunctive risks require the success of just one such component; conjunctive risks, all of them. Seven studies converge to show people prefer to consolidate disjunctive risks into fewer components and to spread conjunctive risks across more components, independent of the objective or subjective implicatio…
Who sees which political falsehoods as more acceptable and why: A new look at in-group loyalty and trustworthiness
Many politicians-even those who occupy some of the most powerful offices in the world-lie. Five studies examined how conservative and liberal Americans responded to media reports of politicians' falsehoods-that is, flagged falsehoods (FFs). Even accounting for partisan biases in how much participants dismissed such reports as fake news and assumed that such lies were unintentional, we consistently observed partisan evaluations in how much FFs wer…
Bundle Selection and Variety Seeking: The Importance of Combinatorics
When consumers select bundles of goods, they may construct those sequentially (e.g., building a bouquet one flower at a time) or make a single choice of a prepackaged bundle (e.g., selecting an already-complete bouquet). Previous research suggested that the sequential construction of bundles encourages variety seeking. The present research revisits this claim and offers a theoretical explanation rooted in combinatorics and norm communication. Whe…
The commonness fallacy: Commonly chosen options have less choice appeal than people think
overestimating how often common (but bland) options (e.g., vanilla ice cream) will be chosen over rarer (but exciting) options (e.g., tiramisu). Given common items are often chosen merely because they are frequently offered, not because they are preferred (tiramisu is rarely offered as a dessert), commonness is not necessarily diagnostic of future choice. Studies 1a and 1b document the commonness fallacy in forecasts of single and repeated choice…
The vicarious construal effect: Seeing and experiencing the world through different eyes
That 2 individuals can look at the same stimulus and experience it differently speaks to the power of construal. People's construals are shaped by their idiosyncratic attitudes, belief systems, and personal histories. Eleven studies provide support for and explain the origin of a vicarious construal effect: Considering perspectives one once had but seemingly lost, one ordinarily would have only with more experience, or one would not have had spon…
The overblown implications effect
People frequently engage in behaviors that put their competencies on display. However, do such actors understand how others view them in light of these performances? Eight studies support an overblown implications effect (OIE): Actors overestimate how much observers think an actor's one-off success or failure offers clear insight about a relevant competency (Study 1). Furthermore, actors overblow performances' implications even in prospect, befor…
Moral character evaluation: Testing another's moral-cognitive machinery
Whether I like it or not, it’s important”: Implicit importance of means predicts self-regulatory persistence and success
To effectively self-regulate, people must persevere on tasks that they deem important, regardless of whether those tasks are enjoyable. Building on past work that has noted the fundamental role of implicit cognition in guiding effective self-regulation, the present paper tests whether an implicit association between goal means and importance predicts self-regulatory persistence and success. Implicit importance predicted markers of effective self-…
Causal trait theories: A new form of person knowledge that explains egocentric pattern projection
Representations of the self and others include not only piecemeal traits but also causal trait theories-explanations for why a person's standing on 1 trait causes or is caused by standings on other traits (Studies 1a-1c). These causal theories help resolve the puzzle of egocentric pattern projection-the tendency for people to assume that traits correlate in the population in the same way they align in the self. Causal trait theories-created to ex…
If he can do it, so can they: Exposure to counterstereotypically successful exemplars prompts automatic inferences
After incidental exposure to Blacks who succeeded in counterstereotypical domains (e.g., Brown University President Ruth Simmons, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison), participants drew an automatic inference that race was not a success-inhibiting factor in modern society. Of note, participants' automatic inferences were not simply guided by their explicit reasoning (i.e., their beliefs about what these exemplars signify about the state of race relation…
The involuntary excluder effect: Those included by an excluder are seen as exclusive themselves
People are highly vigilant for and alarmed by social exclusion. Previous research has focused largely on the emotional and motivational consequences of being unambiguously excluded by others. The present research instead examines how people make sense of a more ambiguous dynamic, 1-person exclusion--situations in which one person (the excluder) excludes someone (the rejected) while including someone else (the included). Using different methodolog…
How Quick Decisions Illuminate Moral Character
It has been suggested that people attend to others’ actions in the service of forming impressions of their underlying dispositions. If so, it follows that in considering others’ morally relevant actions, social perceivers should be responsive to accompanying cues that help illuminate actors’ underlying moral character. This article examines one relevant cue that can characterize any decision process: the speed with which the decision is made. Two…
Predicting persons' versus a person's goodness: Behavioral forecasts diverge for individuals versus populations
Behavioral forecasts of individuals ("How likely is it a randomly selected person will...") and behavioral forecasts of populations ("What percentage of people will...") are often used interchangeably. However, 6 studies showed that behavioral forecasts of individuals and populations systematically differ. In judgments of morally relevant behaviors, forecasters estimated that a randomly selected individual (e.g., a student) would act more selfles…
Affect in the abstract: Abstract mindsets promote sensitivity to affect
No good deed goes unquestioned: Cynical reconstruals maintain belief in the power of self-interest
Visceral fit: While in a visceral state, associated states of the world seem more likely
We propose that visceral states can influence beliefs through "visceral fit": People will judge states of the world associated with their current visceral experience as more likely. We found that warmth influenced belief in global warming (Studies 1-3) and that thirst impacted forecasts of drought and desertification (Study 5). These effects emerged in a naturalistic setting (Study 1) and in experimental lab settings (Studies 2, 3, and 5). Studie…
How chronic self-views influence (and mislead) self-assessments of task performance: Self-views shape bottom-up experiences with the task
Self-assessments of task performance can draw on both top-down sources of information (preconceived notions about one's ability at the task) and bottom-up cues (one's concrete experience with the task itself). Past research has suggested that top-down self-views can mislead performance evaluations but has yet to specify the exact psychological mechanisms that produce this influence. Across 4 experiments, the authors tested the hypothesis that sel…
Egocentric pattern projection: How implicit personality theories recapitulate the geography of the self
Five studies demonstrated egocentric pattern projection, in that the implicit personality theories (IPTs) that participants held about other people tended to recapitulate the terrain of their own personality. To the extent that participants believed they possessed 2 traits to a similar degree within themselves, they tended, through their judgments of others and estimates of population parameters, to claim that the 2 traits were positively correla…
Political Orientation and Ideological Inconsistencies: (Dis)comfort with Value Tradeoffs
Incidental environmental anchors
Three studies examined whether potential anchor values that are incidentally present in the environment can affect a person's numerical estimates. In Study 1, estimates of an athlete's performance were influenced by the number on his jersey. In Study 2, estimates of the proportion of sales in the domestic market were influenced by a product's model number. In Study 3, participants' estimates of how much they would spend at a restaurant were influ…
Incidental environmental anchors
Three studies examined whether potential anchor values that are incidentally present in the environment can affect a person's numerical estimates. In Study 1, estimates of an athlete's performance were influenced by the number on his jersey. In Study 2, estimates of the proportion of sales in the domestic market were influenced by a product's model number. In Study 3, participants' estimates of how much they would spend at a restaurant were influ…
No good deed goes unquestioned: Cynical reconstruals maintain belief in the power of self-interest
Visceral fit: While in a visceral state, associated states of the world seem more likely
We propose that visceral states can influence beliefs through "visceral fit": People will judge states of the world associated with their current visceral experience as more likely. We found that warmth influenced belief in global warming (Studies 1-3) and that thirst impacted forecasts of drought and desertification (Study 5). These effects emerged in a naturalistic setting (Study 1) and in experimental lab settings (Studies 2, 3, and 5). Studie…
Moral character evaluation: Testing another's moral-cognitive machinery
If he can do it, so can they: Exposure to counterstereotypically successful exemplars prompts automatic inferences
After incidental exposure to Blacks who succeeded in counterstereotypical domains (e.g., Brown University President Ruth Simmons, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison), participants drew an automatic inference that race was not a success-inhibiting factor in modern society. Of note, participants' automatic inferences were not simply guided by their explicit reasoning (i.e., their beliefs about what these exemplars signify about the state of race relation…
Egocentric pattern projection: How implicit personality theories recapitulate the geography of the self
Five studies demonstrated egocentric pattern projection, in that the implicit personality theories (IPTs) that participants held about other people tended to recapitulate the terrain of their own personality. To the extent that participants believed they possessed 2 traits to a similar degree within themselves, they tended, through their judgments of others and estimates of population parameters, to claim that the 2 traits were positively correla…
How chronic self-views influence (and mislead) self-assessments of task performance: Self-views shape bottom-up experiences with the task
Self-assessments of task performance can draw on both top-down sources of information (preconceived notions about one's ability at the task) and bottom-up cues (one's concrete experience with the task itself). Past research has suggested that top-down self-views can mislead performance evaluations but has yet to specify the exact psychological mechanisms that produce this influence. Across 4 experiments, the authors tested the hypothesis that sel…
The vicarious construal effect: Seeing and experiencing the world through different eyes
That 2 individuals can look at the same stimulus and experience it differently speaks to the power of construal. People's construals are shaped by their idiosyncratic attitudes, belief systems, and personal histories. Eleven studies provide support for and explain the origin of a vicarious construal effect: Considering perspectives one once had but seemingly lost, one ordinarily would have only with more experience, or one would not have had spon…
The involuntary excluder effect: Those included by an excluder are seen as exclusive themselves
People are highly vigilant for and alarmed by social exclusion. Previous research has focused largely on the emotional and motivational consequences of being unambiguously excluded by others. The present research instead examines how people make sense of a more ambiguous dynamic, 1-person exclusion--situations in which one person (the excluder) excludes someone (the rejected) while including someone else (the included). Using different methodolog…
Predicting persons' versus a person's goodness: Behavioral forecasts diverge for individuals versus populations
Behavioral forecasts of individuals ("How likely is it a randomly selected person will...") and behavioral forecasts of populations ("What percentage of people will...") are often used interchangeably. However, 6 studies showed that behavioral forecasts of individuals and populations systematically differ. In judgments of morally relevant behaviors, forecasters estimated that a randomly selected individual (e.g., a student) would act more selfles…
Affect in the abstract: Abstract mindsets promote sensitivity to affect
Absolute moral perceptions of the self and others: People are bad, a person is good, I am great
For decades, psychologists have appreciated that the average person sees themselves as better than average, particularly in moral domains. Although self-other comparisons permit establishing normative violations, they leave unanswered whether people see themselves and others positively or negatively in an absolute sense. The present research introduces a novel measure of moral thresholds to identify the behavioral tipping point that subjectively …
Who sees which political falsehoods as more acceptable and why: A new look at in-group loyalty and trustworthiness
Many politicians-even those who occupy some of the most powerful offices in the world-lie. Five studies examined how conservative and liberal Americans responded to media reports of politicians' falsehoods-that is, flagged falsehoods (FFs). Even accounting for partisan biases in how much participants dismissed such reports as fake news and assumed that such lies were unintentional, we consistently observed partisan evaluations in how much FFs wer…
Bundle Selection and Variety Seeking: The Importance of Combinatorics
When consumers select bundles of goods, they may construct those sequentially (e.g., building a bouquet one flower at a time) or make a single choice of a prepackaged bundle (e.g., selecting an already-complete bouquet). Previous research suggested that the sequential construction of bundles encourages variety seeking. The present research revisits this claim and offers a theoretical explanation rooted in combinatorics and norm communication. Whe…
The commonness fallacy: Commonly chosen options have less choice appeal than people think
overestimating how often common (but bland) options (e.g., vanilla ice cream) will be chosen over rarer (but exciting) options (e.g., tiramisu). Given common items are often chosen merely because they are frequently offered, not because they are preferred (tiramisu is rarely offered as a dessert), commonness is not necessarily diagnostic of future choice. Studies 1a and 1b document the commonness fallacy in forecasts of single and repeated choice…
The overblown implications effect
People frequently engage in behaviors that put their competencies on display. However, do such actors understand how others view them in light of these performances? Eight studies support an overblown implications effect (OIE): Actors overestimate how much observers think an actor's one-off success or failure offers clear insight about a relevant competency (Study 1). Furthermore, actors overblow performances' implications even in prospect, befor…
Causal trait theories: A new form of person knowledge that explains egocentric pattern projection
Representations of the self and others include not only piecemeal traits but also causal trait theories-explanations for why a person's standing on 1 trait causes or is caused by standings on other traits (Studies 1a-1c). These causal theories help resolve the puzzle of egocentric pattern projection-the tendency for people to assume that traits correlate in the population in the same way they align in the self. Causal trait theories-created to ex…
Political Orientation and Ideological Inconsistencies: (Dis)comfort with Value Tradeoffs
Incidental environmental anchors
Three studies examined whether potential anchor values that are incidentally present in the environment can affect a person's numerical estimates. In Study 1, estimates of an athlete's performance were influenced by the number on his jersey. In Study 2, estimates of the proportion of sales in the domestic market were influenced by a product's model number. In Study 3, participants' estimates of how much they would spend at a restaurant were influ…
How chronic self-views influence (and mislead) self-assessments of task performance: Self-views shape bottom-up experiences with the task
Self-assessments of task performance can draw on both top-down sources of information (preconceived notions about one's ability at the task) and bottom-up cues (one's concrete experience with the task itself). Past research has suggested that top-down self-views can mislead performance evaluations but has yet to specify the exact psychological mechanisms that produce this influence. Across 4 experiments, the authors tested the hypothesis that sel…
Egocentric pattern projection: How implicit personality theories recapitulate the geography of the self
Five studies demonstrated egocentric pattern projection, in that the implicit personality theories (IPTs) that participants held about other people tended to recapitulate the terrain of their own personality. To the extent that participants believed they possessed 2 traits to a similar degree within themselves, they tended, through their judgments of others and estimates of population parameters, to claim that the 2 traits were positively correla…
Political Orientation and Ideological Inconsistencies: (Dis)comfort with Value Tradeoffs
Affect in the abstract: Abstract mindsets promote sensitivity to affect
No good deed goes unquestioned: Cynical reconstruals maintain belief in the power of self-interest
Visceral fit: While in a visceral state, associated states of the world seem more likely
We propose that visceral states can influence beliefs through "visceral fit": People will judge states of the world associated with their current visceral experience as more likely. We found that warmth influenced belief in global warming (Studies 1-3) and that thirst impacted forecasts of drought and desertification (Study 5). These effects emerged in a naturalistic setting (Study 1) and in experimental lab settings (Studies 2, 3, and 5). Studie…
How Quick Decisions Illuminate Moral Character
It has been suggested that people attend to others’ actions in the service of forming impressions of their underlying dispositions. If so, it follows that in considering others’ morally relevant actions, social perceivers should be responsive to accompanying cues that help illuminate actors’ underlying moral character. This article examines one relevant cue that can characterize any decision process: the speed with which the decision is made. Two…
Predicting persons' versus a person's goodness: Behavioral forecasts diverge for individuals versus populations
Behavioral forecasts of individuals ("How likely is it a randomly selected person will...") and behavioral forecasts of populations ("What percentage of people will...") are often used interchangeably. However, 6 studies showed that behavioral forecasts of individuals and populations systematically differ. In judgments of morally relevant behaviors, forecasters estimated that a randomly selected individual (e.g., a student) would act more selfles…
If he can do it, so can they: Exposure to counterstereotypically successful exemplars prompts automatic inferences
After incidental exposure to Blacks who succeeded in counterstereotypical domains (e.g., Brown University President Ruth Simmons, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison), participants drew an automatic inference that race was not a success-inhibiting factor in modern society. Of note, participants' automatic inferences were not simply guided by their explicit reasoning (i.e., their beliefs about what these exemplars signify about the state of race relation…
The involuntary excluder effect: Those included by an excluder are seen as exclusive themselves
People are highly vigilant for and alarmed by social exclusion. Previous research has focused largely on the emotional and motivational consequences of being unambiguously excluded by others. The present research instead examines how people make sense of a more ambiguous dynamic, 1-person exclusion--situations in which one person (the excluder) excludes someone (the rejected) while including someone else (the included). Using different methodolog…
Causal trait theories: A new form of person knowledge that explains egocentric pattern projection
Representations of the self and others include not only piecemeal traits but also causal trait theories-explanations for why a person's standing on 1 trait causes or is caused by standings on other traits (Studies 1a-1c). These causal theories help resolve the puzzle of egocentric pattern projection-the tendency for people to assume that traits correlate in the population in the same way they align in the self. Causal trait theories-created to ex…
Whether I like it or not, it’s important”: Implicit importance of means predicts self-regulatory persistence and success
To effectively self-regulate, people must persevere on tasks that they deem important, regardless of whether those tasks are enjoyable. Building on past work that has noted the fundamental role of implicit cognition in guiding effective self-regulation, the present paper tests whether an implicit association between goal means and importance predicts self-regulatory persistence and success. Implicit importance predicted markers of effective self-…
The overblown implications effect
People frequently engage in behaviors that put their competencies on display. However, do such actors understand how others view them in light of these performances? Eight studies support an overblown implications effect (OIE): Actors overestimate how much observers think an actor's one-off success or failure offers clear insight about a relevant competency (Study 1). Furthermore, actors overblow performances' implications even in prospect, befor…
Moral character evaluation: Testing another's moral-cognitive machinery
The commonness fallacy: Commonly chosen options have less choice appeal than people think
overestimating how often common (but bland) options (e.g., vanilla ice cream) will be chosen over rarer (but exciting) options (e.g., tiramisu). Given common items are often chosen merely because they are frequently offered, not because they are preferred (tiramisu is rarely offered as a dessert), commonness is not necessarily diagnostic of future choice. Studies 1a and 1b document the commonness fallacy in forecasts of single and repeated choice…
The vicarious construal effect: Seeing and experiencing the world through different eyes
That 2 individuals can look at the same stimulus and experience it differently speaks to the power of construal. People's construals are shaped by their idiosyncratic attitudes, belief systems, and personal histories. Eleven studies provide support for and explain the origin of a vicarious construal effect: Considering perspectives one once had but seemingly lost, one ordinarily would have only with more experience, or one would not have had spon…
Needing everything (or just one thing) to go right: Myopic preferences for consolidating or spreading risks
Succeeding at a task often depends on the success or failure of component events. Such multicomponent risks can take one of two general forms. Disjunctive risks require the success of just one such component; conjunctive risks, all of them. Seven studies converge to show people prefer to consolidate disjunctive risks into fewer components and to spread conjunctive risks across more components, independent of the objective or subjective implicatio…
Who sees which political falsehoods as more acceptable and why: A new look at in-group loyalty and trustworthiness
Many politicians-even those who occupy some of the most powerful offices in the world-lie. Five studies examined how conservative and liberal Americans responded to media reports of politicians' falsehoods-that is, flagged falsehoods (FFs). Even accounting for partisan biases in how much participants dismissed such reports as fake news and assumed that such lies were unintentional, we consistently observed partisan evaluations in how much FFs wer…
Bundle Selection and Variety Seeking: The Importance of Combinatorics
When consumers select bundles of goods, they may construct those sequentially (e.g., building a bouquet one flower at a time) or make a single choice of a prepackaged bundle (e.g., selecting an already-complete bouquet). Previous research suggested that the sequential construction of bundles encourages variety seeking. The present research revisits this claim and offers a theoretical explanation rooted in combinatorics and norm communication. Whe…
Evaluations are inherently comparative, but are compared to what
Understanding how objective quantities are translated into subjective evaluations has long been of interest to social scientists, medical professionals, and policymakers with an interest in how people process and act on quantitative information. The theory of decision by sampling proposes a comparative procedure: Values seem larger or smaller based on how they rank in a comparison set, the decision sample. But what values are included in this dec…
Moving beyond the belief–behavior correlation question: Decision contexts facilitate beliefs' effects on behavior
Specific beliefs do not correlate with seemingly relevant behaviors for many reasons. Such correlations may be low even when beliefs perfectly cause behavior (e.g., because multiple beliefs compete for influence, because beliefs have various behavioral outlets). A belief may be a necessary precursor to, but not a guarantee of, a behavior. And most critically, belief–behavior correlations may depend on the context in which behavioral decisions are…
Absolute moral perceptions of the self and others: People are bad, a person is good, I am great
For decades, psychologists have appreciated that the average person sees themselves as better than average, particularly in moral domains. Although self-other comparisons permit establishing normative violations, they leave unanswered whether people see themselves and others positively or negatively in an absolute sense. The present research introduces a novel measure of moral thresholds to identify the behavioral tipping point that subjectively …
Psychology (20 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (8 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (7 works) · Perception (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · PsycINFO (6 works)