The verity of results about a psychological construct hinges on the validity of its measurement, making construct validation a fundamental methodology to the scientific process. We reviewed a representative sample of articles published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology for construct validity evidence. We report that latent variable measurement, in which responses to items are used to represent a construct, is pervasive in social and personality research. However, the field does not appear to be engaged in best practices for ongoing construct validation. We found that validity evidence of existing and author-developed scales was lacking, with coefficient α often being the only psychometric evidence reported. We provide a discussion of why the construct validation framework is important for social and personality researchers and recommendations for improving practice.

Models of person perception have long asserted that our impressions of others are guided by characteristics of both the target and perceiver. However, research has not yet quantified to what extent perceivers and targets contribute to different impressions. This quantification is theoretically critical, as it addresses how much an impression arises from "our minds" versus "others' faces." Here, we apply cross-classified random effects models to address this fundamental question in social cognition, using approximately 700,000 ratings of faces. With this approach, we demonstrate that (a) different trait impressions have unique causal processes, meaning that some impressions are largely informed by perceiver-level characteristics whereas others are driven more by physical target-level characteristics; (b) modeling of perceiver- and target-variance in impressions informs fundamental models of social perception; (c) Perceiver × Target interactions explain a substantial portion of variance in impressions; (d) greater emotional intensity in stimuli decreases the influence of the perceiver; and (e) more variable, naturalistic stimuli increases variation across perceivers. Important overarching patterns emerged. Broadly, traits and dimensions representing inferences of character (e.g., dominance) are driven more by perceiver characteristics than those representing appearance-based appraisals (e.g., youthful-attractiveness). Moreover, inferences made of more ambiguous traits (e.g., creative) or displays (e.g., faces with less extreme emotions, less-controlled stimuli) are similarly driven more by perceiver than target characteristics. Together, results highlight the large role that perceiver and target variability play in trait impressions, and develop a new topography of trait impressions that considers the source of the impression. (PsycINFO Database Record

Due to a lack of data, the demographic and psychological factors associated with lethal force by police officers have remained insufficiently explored. We develop the first predictive models of lethal force by integrating crowd-sourced and fact-checked lethal force databases with regional demographics and measures of geolocated implicit and explicit racial biases collected from 2,156,053 residents across the United States. Results indicate that only the implicit racial prejudices and stereotypes of White residents, beyond major demographic covariates, are associated with disproportionally more use of lethal force with Blacks relative to regional base rates of Blacks in the population. Thus, the current work provides the first macropsychological statistical models of lethal force, indicating that the context in which police officers work is significantly associated with disproportionate use of lethal force.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.(Burns, 1785)And often, going awry is psychologically meaningful. Recent advances in psychological science have shown that motion trajectories reflect underlying cognitive processes. In the current article, we discuss how analysis of computer mouse-trajectories and their temporal dynamics can provide powerful insight into these processes. Our goal is to describe how researchers might incorporate mouse-tracking into their psychological toolbox such that they can address novel hypotheses within their areas of research. We primarily focus on recently developed advanced AbstractComputer mouse-tracking is a relatively recently developed behavioral methodology that can contribute unique insight into a wide variety of psychological phenomena. By recording mouse movements en route to specific responses on a screen, researchers glean continuous information about tentative commitments to multiple response alternatives over time. This approach yields a richness of data that can be fully explored with a variety of sophisticated analytic techniques, but these approaches are relatively underutilized and can be difficult to adopt. Here we describe several techniques for researchers to examine the onset and timing of evolving decision processes; test the degree of response competition at different time points; assess trajectory complexity with spatial disorder analyses; identify qualitatively distinct psychological processes during response generation; and finally to distill unique and meaningful components from mouse-tracking data for subsequent analysis. With this guide, we hope researchers can address novel hypotheses otherwise inaccessible with more traditional methods.

Perceptions of racial bias have been linked to poorer circulatory health among Blacks compared with Whites. However, little is known about whether Whites' actual racial bias contributes to this racial disparity in health. We compiled racial-bias data from 1,391,632 Whites and examined whether racial bias in a given county predicted Black-White disparities in circulatory-disease risk (access to health care, diagnosis of a circulatory disease; Study 1) and circulatory-disease-related death rate (Study 2) in the same county. Results revealed that in counties where Whites reported greater racial bias, Blacks (but not Whites) reported decreased access to health care (Study 1). Furthermore, in counties where Whites reported greater racial bias, both Blacks and Whites showed increased death rates due to circulatory diseases, but this relationship was stronger for Blacks than for Whites (Study 2). These results indicate that racial disparities in risk of circulatory disease and in circulatory-disease-related death rate are more pronounced in communities where Whites harbor more explicit racial bias.