Abigail A Marsh
Biographic Data
| ID | 174276 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Abigail A Marsh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Abigail A |
| FAMILY NAME | Marsh |
| SIGNATURE | MARSH A A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5635-181X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Machine learning prediction of conduct problems in children using the longitudinal ABCD study
BACKGROUND: Children with conduct problems are at elevated risk for negative psychosocial, educational, and behavioral outcomes. Identifying at-risk children can aid in providing timely intervention and prevention, ultimately improving their long-term outcomes. There is a need to develop screening tools to better identify at-risk children who may benefit from early intervention. METHODS: Data were collected from the longitudinal Adolescent Brain …
Development and Validation of the Social Discounting Task
Social discounting—defined as hyperbolic reductions in generosity as social distance increases—is becoming more widely used in psychological research as an indicator of prosocial behavior and is most commonly measured by the Social Discounting Task (SDT). However, while robust, the SDT requires subjects to make 63 dichotomous decisions, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Thus, we created and validated a short-form version of the scale (S…
Addressing climate change with behavioral science
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Empathy for wildlife
Because climate change and the biodiversity crisis are driven by human actions, determining psychological mechanisms underpinning support for environmental action is an urgent priority. Here, we experimentally tested for mechanisms promoting conservation-related motivation and behavior toward a flagship species, wild Tamanend's bottlenose dolphins. Following evidence that empathy increases prosocial motivations and behavior, and that the ability …
Psychopathy and associations with reward responsiveness and social networks in emerging adults
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
Empathic emotion regulation in prosocial behaviour and altruism
Emotions evoked in response to others' distress are important for motivating concerned prosocial responses. But how emotion regulation shapes prosocial responding is not yet well understood. We tested the role of empathic emotion regulation in promoting prosocial motivation and costly donations across two studies, first in a community sample and then in a sample of altruistic kidney donors and a matched comparison sample. Participants engaged in …
A multi-semester classroom demonstration yields evidence in support of the facial feedback effect
The facial feedback effect refers to the influence of unobtrusive manipulations of facial behavior on emotional outcomes. That manipulations inducing or inhibiting smiling can shape positive affect and evaluations is a staple of undergraduate psychology curricula and supports theories of embodied emotion. Thus, the results of a Registered Replication Report indicating minimal evidence to support the facial feedback effect were widely viewed as ca…
Social discounting and distance perceptions in costly altruism
Why do fearful facial expressions elicit behavioral approach? Evidence from a combined approach-avoidance implicit association test
Despite communicating a "negative" emotion, fearful facial expressions predominantly elicit behavioral approach from perceivers. It has been hypothesized that this seemingly paradoxical effect may occur due to fearful expressions' resemblance to vulnerable, infantile faces. However, this hypothesis has not yet been tested. We used a combined approach-avoidance/implicit association test (IAT) to test this hypothesis. Participants completed an appr…
Power Plays
Both transient and stable facial cues have evolved as essential features of social communication in humans. Accumulating research links actual and perceived aggression to a higher ratio between the height and bizygomatic width of a person’s face (facial width-to-height ratio [WHR]) and shows that digitally increasing this ratio can alter apparent aggressiveness. We present evidence that facial behaviors associated with anger—the state most closel…
Psychopathy and fear
Psychopathy is a disorder associated with antisocial behavior and deficits in responding to emotional stimuli, particularly fear-related stimuli. This research demonstrates that these deficits extend to judgments about behaviors that cause fear in others. We assessed whether psychopathy is associated with the ability to identify the emotional consequences of social behaviors and with judgments about these behaviors' acceptability. We found that p…
Deficits in facial affect recognition among antisocial populations
Accurate identification of fear facial expressions predicts prosocial behavior
The fear facial expression is a distress cue that is associated with the provision of help and prosocial behavior. Prior psychiatric studies have found deficits in the recognition of this expression by individuals with antisocial tendencies. However, no prior study has shown accuracy for recognition of fear to predict actual prosocial or antisocial behavior in an experimental setting. In 3 studies, the authors tested the prediction that individua…
Separated by a Common Language
The expression of nonverbal cues may differ systematically across cultures. Common cues used in distinct ways cross-culturally may be termed nonverbal accents. The data in this study indicate that nonverbal accents can help perceivers to distinguish the nationality of expressers. In Study 1, American participants could determine the nationality of Australian and American adults with above-chance accuracy when viewing their emotional expressions b…
What do i think you're doing? Action identification and mind attribution
The authors examined how a perceiver's identification of a target person's actions co-varies with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target's action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3,…
The Effects of Fear and Anger Facial Expressions on Approach- and Avoidance-Related Behaviors
The facial expressions of fear and anger are universal social signals in humans. Both expressions have been frequently presumed to signify threat to perceivers and therefore are often used in studies investigating responses to threatening stimuli. Here the authors show that the anger expression facilitates avoidance-related behavior in participants, which supports the notion of this expression being a threatening stimulus. The fear expression, on…
What do i think you're doing? Action identification and mind attribution
The authors examined how a perceiver's identification of a target person's actions co-varies with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target's action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3,…
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
Social discounting and distance perceptions in costly altruism
Psychopathy and associations with reward responsiveness and social networks in emerging adults
The Effects of Fear and Anger Facial Expressions on Approach- and Avoidance-Related Behaviors
The facial expressions of fear and anger are universal social signals in humans. Both expressions have been frequently presumed to signify threat to perceivers and therefore are often used in studies investigating responses to threatening stimuli. Here the authors show that the anger expression facilitates avoidance-related behavior in participants, which supports the notion of this expression being a threatening stimulus. The fear expression, on…
What do i think you're doing? Action identification and mind attribution
The authors examined how a perceiver's identification of a target person's actions co-varies with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target's action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3,…
Accurate identification of fear facial expressions predicts prosocial behavior
The fear facial expression is a distress cue that is associated with the provision of help and prosocial behavior. Prior psychiatric studies have found deficits in the recognition of this expression by individuals with antisocial tendencies. However, no prior study has shown accuracy for recognition of fear to predict actual prosocial or antisocial behavior in an experimental setting. In 3 studies, the authors tested the prediction that individua…
Separated by a Common Language
The expression of nonverbal cues may differ systematically across cultures. Common cues used in distinct ways cross-culturally may be termed nonverbal accents. The data in this study indicate that nonverbal accents can help perceivers to distinguish the nationality of expressers. In Study 1, American participants could determine the nationality of Australian and American adults with above-chance accuracy when viewing their emotional expressions b…
Deficits in facial affect recognition among antisocial populations
Psychopathy and fear
Psychopathy is a disorder associated with antisocial behavior and deficits in responding to emotional stimuli, particularly fear-related stimuli. This research demonstrates that these deficits extend to judgments about behaviors that cause fear in others. We assessed whether psychopathy is associated with the ability to identify the emotional consequences of social behaviors and with judgments about these behaviors' acceptability. We found that p…
Power Plays
Both transient and stable facial cues have evolved as essential features of social communication in humans. Accumulating research links actual and perceived aggression to a higher ratio between the height and bizygomatic width of a person’s face (facial width-to-height ratio [WHR]) and shows that digitally increasing this ratio can alter apparent aggressiveness. We present evidence that facial behaviors associated with anger—the state most closel…
Why do fearful facial expressions elicit behavioral approach? Evidence from a combined approach-avoidance implicit association test
Despite communicating a "negative" emotion, fearful facial expressions predominantly elicit behavioral approach from perceivers. It has been hypothesized that this seemingly paradoxical effect may occur due to fearful expressions' resemblance to vulnerable, infantile faces. However, this hypothesis has not yet been tested. We used a combined approach-avoidance/implicit association test (IAT) to test this hypothesis. Participants completed an appr…
Social discounting and distance perceptions in costly altruism
A multi-semester classroom demonstration yields evidence in support of the facial feedback effect
The facial feedback effect refers to the influence of unobtrusive manipulations of facial behavior on emotional outcomes. That manipulations inducing or inhibiting smiling can shape positive affect and evaluations is a staple of undergraduate psychology curricula and supports theories of embodied emotion. Thus, the results of a Registered Replication Report indicating minimal evidence to support the facial feedback effect were widely viewed as ca…
Empathic emotion regulation in prosocial behaviour and altruism
Emotions evoked in response to others' distress are important for motivating concerned prosocial responses. But how emotion regulation shapes prosocial responding is not yet well understood. We tested the role of empathic emotion regulation in promoting prosocial motivation and costly donations across two studies, first in a community sample and then in a sample of altruistic kidney donors and a matched comparison sample. Participants engaged in …
Psychopathy and associations with reward responsiveness and social networks in emerging adults
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
Addressing climate change with behavioral science
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Empathy for wildlife
Because climate change and the biodiversity crisis are driven by human actions, determining psychological mechanisms underpinning support for environmental action is an urgent priority. Here, we experimentally tested for mechanisms promoting conservation-related motivation and behavior toward a flagship species, wild Tamanend's bottlenose dolphins. Following evidence that empathy increases prosocial motivations and behavior, and that the ability …
Machine learning prediction of conduct problems in children using the longitudinal ABCD study
BACKGROUND: Children with conduct problems are at elevated risk for negative psychosocial, educational, and behavioral outcomes. Identifying at-risk children can aid in providing timely intervention and prevention, ultimately improving their long-term outcomes. There is a need to develop screening tools to better identify at-risk children who may benefit from early intervention. METHODS: Data were collected from the longitudinal Adolescent Brain …
Development and Validation of the Social Discounting Task
Social discounting—defined as hyperbolic reductions in generosity as social distance increases—is becoming more widely used in psychological research as an indicator of prosocial behavior and is most commonly measured by the Social Discounting Task (SDT). However, while robust, the SDT requires subjects to make 63 dichotomous decisions, which can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Thus, we created and validated a short-form version of the scale (S…
Psychology (15 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (5 works) · Communication (5 works) · Facial expression (5 works) · Communication (4 works) · Empathy (4 works)