Malia F Mason
Biographic Data
| ID | 4230727 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Malia F Mason |
| GIVEN NAMES | Malia F |
| FAMILY NAME | Mason |
| SIGNATURE | MASON M F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Columbia University |
| ORCID | 0009-0002-3295-3044 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 129 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Hedging First Offers Permits Assertiveness While Lowering Risk a Partner Walks
Negotiators often open with assertive offers to anchor discussions in their favor, yet this approach risks offending potential partners and foreclosing negotiations. Across four experiments, we demonstrate that hedged language softens proposals, allowing negotiators to remain assertive while reducing the risk of offending deal partners and preventing their early exit. Experiment 1 established this effect in a transactional sale context without po…
What does it mean to be (seen as) human? The importance of gender in humanization
What does it mean to be (seen as) human? Ten studies explore this age-old question and show that gender is a critical feature of perceiving humanness, being more central to conceptions of humanness than other social categories (race, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability). Our first six studies induce humanization (i.e., anthropomorphism) and measure social-category ascription. Across different manipulations (e.g., having participants rec…
Hey Siri, I love you
Women’s work
From belief to deceit
Gender Stereotypes and the Coordination of Mnemonic Work within Heterosexual Couples
The experience of secrecy
The concept of secrecy calls to mind a dyadic interaction: one person hiding a secret from another during a conversation or social interaction. The current work, however, demonstrates that this aspect of secrecy is rather rare. Taking a broader view of secrecy as the intent to conceal information, which only sometimes necessitates concealment, yields a new psychology of secrecy. Ten studies demonstrate the secrets people have, what it is like to …
Tandem anchoring
We examined whether and why range offers (e.g., "I want $7,200 to $7,600 for my car") matter in negotiations. A selective-attention account predicts that motivated and skeptical offer-recipients focus overwhelmingly on the attractive endpoint (i.e., a buyer would hear, in effect, "I want $7,200"). In contrast, we propose a tandem anchoring account, arguing that offer-recipients are often influenced by both endpoints as they judge the offer-maker'…
Precise offers are potent anchors
How daydreaming relates to life satisfaction, loneliness, and social support
The powerful size others down
Specialization in Relational Reasoning
Although deduction can be applied both to associations between nonsocial objects and to social relationships among people, the authors hypothesize that social targets elicit specialized cognitive mechanisms that facilitate inferences about social relations. Consistent with this view, in Experiments 1a and 1b the authors show that participants are more efficient and more accurate at inferring social relations compared to nonsocial relations. In Ex…
Male susceptibility to attentional capture by power cues
Decision making and testosterone
Familiarity and person construal
In this experiment, we examined how perceivers' familiarity with targets moderates person construal. Based on evidence from object categorization that level of construal varies with expertise in a manner that maximizes cue validity, we reasoned that although social (i.e., group‐level) categorization is functional for construing unfamiliar others (about whom little or no individuating information is available), it is less functional for familiar o…
Perspective-Taking from a Social Neuroscience Standpoint
A primary focus of research undertaken by social psychologists is to establish why perceivers fail to accurately adopt or understand other people's perspectives. From overestimating the dispositional bases of behavior to misinterpreting the motivations of out-group members, the message that emerges from this work is that social perception is frequently imperfect. In contrast, researchers from disciplines outside social psychology seek to identify…
Wandering Minds
Despite evidence pointing to a ubiquitous tendency of human minds to wander, little is known about the neural operations that support this core component of human cognition. Using both thought sampling and brain imaging, the current investigation demonstrated that mind-wandering is associated with activity in a default network of cortical regions that are active when the brain is “at rest.” In addition, individuals' reports of the tendency of the…
Understanding Others
The face is a critical stimulus in person perception, yet little research has considered the efficiency of the processing operations through which perceivers glean social knowledge from facial cues. Integrating ideas from work on social cognition and face processing, the current research considered the ease with which invariant aspects of person knowledge can be extracted from faces under different viewing and processing conditions. The results o…
The Perceptual Determinants of Person Construal
Guided by a heuristic account of social-cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that bas…
Precise offers are potent anchors
The experience of secrecy
The concept of secrecy calls to mind a dyadic interaction: one person hiding a secret from another during a conversation or social interaction. The current work, however, demonstrates that this aspect of secrecy is rather rare. Taking a broader view of secrecy as the intent to conceal information, which only sometimes necessitates concealment, yields a new psychology of secrecy. Ten studies demonstrate the secrets people have, what it is like to …
The Perceptual Determinants of Person Construal
Guided by a heuristic account of social-cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that bas…
What does it mean to be (seen as) human? The importance of gender in humanization
What does it mean to be (seen as) human? Ten studies explore this age-old question and show that gender is a critical feature of perceiving humanness, being more central to conceptions of humanness than other social categories (race, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability). Our first six studies induce humanization (i.e., anthropomorphism) and measure social-category ascription. Across different manipulations (e.g., having participants rec…
The powerful size others down
Gender Stereotypes and the Coordination of Mnemonic Work within Heterosexual Couples
Tandem anchoring
We examined whether and why range offers (e.g., "I want $7,200 to $7,600 for my car") matter in negotiations. A selective-attention account predicts that motivated and skeptical offer-recipients focus overwhelmingly on the attractive endpoint (i.e., a buyer would hear, in effect, "I want $7,200"). In contrast, we propose a tandem anchoring account, arguing that offer-recipients are often influenced by both endpoints as they judge the offer-maker'…
Understanding Others
The face is a critical stimulus in person perception, yet little research has considered the efficiency of the processing operations through which perceivers glean social knowledge from facial cues. Integrating ideas from work on social cognition and face processing, the current research considered the ease with which invariant aspects of person knowledge can be extracted from faces under different viewing and processing conditions. The results o…
From belief to deceit
Male susceptibility to attentional capture by power cues
Decision making and testosterone
Hey Siri, I love you
Familiarity and person construal
In this experiment, we examined how perceivers' familiarity with targets moderates person construal. Based on evidence from object categorization that level of construal varies with expertise in a manner that maximizes cue validity, we reasoned that although social (i.e., group‐level) categorization is functional for construing unfamiliar others (about whom little or no individuating information is available), it is less functional for familiar o…
Perspective-Taking from a Social Neuroscience Standpoint
A primary focus of research undertaken by social psychologists is to establish why perceivers fail to accurately adopt or understand other people's perspectives. From overestimating the dispositional bases of behavior to misinterpreting the motivations of out-group members, the message that emerges from this work is that social perception is frequently imperfect. In contrast, researchers from disciplines outside social psychology seek to identify…
Understanding Others
The face is a critical stimulus in person perception, yet little research has considered the efficiency of the processing operations through which perceivers glean social knowledge from facial cues. Integrating ideas from work on social cognition and face processing, the current research considered the ease with which invariant aspects of person knowledge can be extracted from faces under different viewing and processing conditions. The results o…
The Perceptual Determinants of Person Construal
Guided by a heuristic account of social-cognitive functioning, researchers have attempted to identify the cognitive benefits that derive from a categorical approach to person construal. While revealing, this work has overlooked the fact that, prior to the application of categorical thinking as an economizing mental tool, perceivers must first extract category-triggering information from available stimulus cues. It is possible, therefore, that bas…
Wandering Minds
Despite evidence pointing to a ubiquitous tendency of human minds to wander, little is known about the neural operations that support this core component of human cognition. Using both thought sampling and brain imaging, the current investigation demonstrated that mind-wandering is associated with activity in a default network of cortical regions that are active when the brain is “at rest.” In addition, individuals' reports of the tendency of the…
Perspective-Taking from a Social Neuroscience Standpoint
A primary focus of research undertaken by social psychologists is to establish why perceivers fail to accurately adopt or understand other people's perspectives. From overestimating the dispositional bases of behavior to misinterpreting the motivations of out-group members, the message that emerges from this work is that social perception is frequently imperfect. In contrast, researchers from disciplines outside social psychology seek to identify…
Familiarity and person construal
In this experiment, we examined how perceivers' familiarity with targets moderates person construal. Based on evidence from object categorization that level of construal varies with expertise in a manner that maximizes cue validity, we reasoned that although social (i.e., group‐level) categorization is functional for construing unfamiliar others (about whom little or no individuating information is available), it is less functional for familiar o…
Specialization in Relational Reasoning
Although deduction can be applied both to associations between nonsocial objects and to social relationships among people, the authors hypothesize that social targets elicit specialized cognitive mechanisms that facilitate inferences about social relations. Consistent with this view, in Experiments 1a and 1b the authors show that participants are more efficient and more accurate at inferring social relations compared to nonsocial relations. In Ex…
Male susceptibility to attentional capture by power cues
Decision making and testosterone
How daydreaming relates to life satisfaction, loneliness, and social support
The powerful size others down
Precise offers are potent anchors
Tandem anchoring
We examined whether and why range offers (e.g., "I want $7,200 to $7,600 for my car") matter in negotiations. A selective-attention account predicts that motivated and skeptical offer-recipients focus overwhelmingly on the attractive endpoint (i.e., a buyer would hear, in effect, "I want $7,200"). In contrast, we propose a tandem anchoring account, arguing that offer-recipients are often influenced by both endpoints as they judge the offer-maker'…
Gender Stereotypes and the Coordination of Mnemonic Work within Heterosexual Couples
The experience of secrecy
The concept of secrecy calls to mind a dyadic interaction: one person hiding a secret from another during a conversation or social interaction. The current work, however, demonstrates that this aspect of secrecy is rather rare. Taking a broader view of secrecy as the intent to conceal information, which only sometimes necessitates concealment, yields a new psychology of secrecy. Ten studies demonstrate the secrets people have, what it is like to …
From belief to deceit
Women’s work
What does it mean to be (seen as) human? The importance of gender in humanization
What does it mean to be (seen as) human? Ten studies explore this age-old question and show that gender is a critical feature of perceiving humanness, being more central to conceptions of humanness than other social categories (race, age, sexual orientation, religion, disability). Our first six studies induce humanization (i.e., anthropomorphism) and measure social-category ascription. Across different manipulations (e.g., having participants rec…
Hey Siri, I love you
Hedging First Offers Permits Assertiveness While Lowering Risk a Partner Walks
Negotiators often open with assertive offers to anchor discussions in their favor, yet this approach risks offending potential partners and foreclosing negotiations. Across four experiments, we demonstrate that hedged language softens proposals, allowing negotiators to remain assertive while reducing the risk of offending deal partners and preventing their early exit. Experiment 1 established this effect in a transactional sale context without po…
Psychology (19 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Cognitive psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Cognition (8 works) · Perception (8 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (6 works) · Social cognition (6 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (5 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (5 works)