This research examines the role of trait empathy in emotional contagion through non-social targets—art objects. Studies 1a and 1b showed that high- (compared to low-) empathy individuals are more likely to infer an artist’s emotions based on the emotional valence of the artwork and, as a result, are more likely to experience the respective emotions themselves. Studies 2a and 2b experimentally manipulated artists’ emotions via revealing details about their personal life. Study 3 experimentally induced positive vs. negative emotions in individuals who then wrote literary texts. These texts were shown to another sample of participants. High- (compared to low-) empathy participants were more like to accurately identify and take on the emotions ostensibly (Studies 2a and 2b) or actually (Study 3) experienced by the “artists”. High-empathy individuals’ enhanced sensitivity to others’ emotions is not restricted to social targets, such as faces, but extends to products of the human mind, such as objects of art.

This article explores the role of magical thinking in the subjective probabilities of future chance events. In five experiments, we show that individuals tend to predict a more lucky future (reflected in probability judgements of lucky and unfortunate chance events) for someone who happened to purchase a product associated with a highly moral person than for someone who unknowingly purchased a product associated with a highly immoral person. In the former case, positive events were considered more likely than negative events, whereas in the latter case, the difference in the likelihood judgement of positive and negative events disappeared or even reversed. Our results indicate that this effect is unlikely to be driven by participants' immanent justice beliefs, the availability heuristic, or experimenter demand. Finally, we show that individuals rely more heavily on magical thinking when their need for control is threatened, thus suggesting that lack of control represents a factor in driving magical thinking in making predictions about the future.

This article examines the question whether rejection experiences negatively relate to the social trust of Children Born of War (CBOW) and if this connection is mediated by sense of self-worth. CBOW is a group of people born out of relations during war- and post-war times, involving one parent being a foreign soldier, a para-military officer, rebel or other person directly participating in the hostilities, while the other parent is a member of the native population. Also children born to child soldiers and children fathered by members of a peacekeeping troop are included within this group. These children, due to their biological background, often grow up in a surrounding in which they are perceived as child of the enemy. The general hypothesis is that, due to their exposure to rejection experiences by their caregivers as well as by the society, CBOW are less likely to develop trust. It is further assumed that this relationship is mediated by the sense of self-worth. A structural equation model was applied to test the relation using a sample of Norwegian children born of war. Results indicate that CBOW who experience rejection share a lower sense of self-worth, which is further connected to lower trust, whereas no direct association between rejection experiences and trust was found.