Austin Lee Nichols

Central European University | CEU · Department of Economics

Despite the applicability of the preference for consistency (PFC) scale to multiple real-world settings, the large number of items limits its use in field studies. To ease this restriction, we constructed and tested a single-item measure (i.e., the single-item need for consistency scale—SIN-C). Through three studies (N ~ 1000), we examined the conc...

The need to belong is one of the most fundamental and well-researched human motives. Although a valid 10-item need to belong scale (NTB) is now readily available, many research settings may not afford researchers the luxury of including it, despite its potential relevance to a variety of research questions. The current research constructed and vali...

Although researchers are often concerned with the presence of participant demand, few have directly examined effects of demand on participant behavior. Before beginning the present study, a confederate informed participants (N = 100) of the study's purported hypothesis. Participants then performed a laboratory task designed to evaluate the extent t...

Purpose The benefits of meaning in the workplace are abundant. However, few opportunities exist to increase meaning among employees in ways that result in desired organizational impacts. The current study developed two new mindfulness-based interventions designed to ultimately increase both job and life satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach Ov...

We provide a theoretical framework for what it means to be self-connected and propose that self-connection is an important potential contributor to a person’s well-being. We define self-connection as consisting of three components: 1) an awareness of oneself, 2) an acceptance of oneself based on this awareness, and 3) an alignment of one’s behavior...

Over the past decade, support for the relationship between mindfulness and happiness has increased dramatically. The consensus is that people who are mindful also experience greater happiness. However, little is still known about how and why greater mindfulness leads one to be happier. The current research calls on recent theorizing to help underst...

Introduction Mindfulness-based practices have received significant attention recently due to the numerous benefits that result from increased mindfulness. One construct, self-connection, is less well-known but appears to relate to mindfulness. Objective The current study experimentally manipulated self-connection in an attempt to increase people's...

Self-connection is composed of three factors: (1) self-awareness, (2) self-acceptance, and (3) self-alignment. Although some promising results suggest that self-connection uniquely contributes to well-being, they have relied on an untested, single-item measure. To advance empirical examination of self-connection and its role in well-being, the curr...

Self-connection is defined as an (1) awareness of oneself, (2) acceptance of oneself based on this awareness, and (3) alignment of one's behavior with this awareness. Although some promising results suggest that self-connection uniquely contributes to well-being, they have relied on an untested, single-item measure. To advance empirical examination...

Understanding how and why stress‐related mindsets result in various outcomes is important for understanding how stress mindset interventions can promote the well‐being. Recent research suggested that mindsets about stress might work together with self‐connection to predict well‐being. However, the nature of those relationships remains unclear. Acro...

Promoting college student retention and career success remains a primary goal for higher education. Toward this end, we examined the role of goal congruity and self‐connection in the extent to which students feel positivity toward their major. Specifically, we tested the role of self‐connection in the relationship between goals and positivity towar...

People who have meaningful lives generally experience less anxiety and depression. Meaning salience, or the awareness of the meaning in one's life, is believed to partially explain this relationship. However, in times of isolation, what might be most salient to people are the meaningful aspects of their lives that have disappeared. This study seeks...

Finding meaning and purpose in one's life facilitates several important work outcomes. A global pandemic that changes both the lives of employees and the way they work likely affects the relationships between workers' meaning in life and work. Making meaning salient to employees, despite the circumstances, may strengthen and preserve these relation...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, various restrictions forced people around the world to socially isolate. People were asked to stay at home and were largely unable to do many of the activities that they derived meaning from. Since meaning is often related to mental health, these restrictions were likely to decrease mental health. The current study aim...

Background: Most people are comfortable asserting the beneficial effects of physical exercise on mental health and well-being. However, little research has examined how different types of physical activity affect these outcomes. Aims: The current study sought to provide a comprehensive understanding of the differential relationships between differe...

To rule out an alternative explanation to their structural fit hypothesis, Payne, Burkley, and Stokes (2008) demonstrated that correlations between implicit and explicit race attitudes were weaker when participants were put under high pressure to respond without bias compared to when they were placed under low pressure. This effect, although smalle...

Despite the pervasiveness of the Five Factor Model in personality research and in many practical applications, the lower‐order facets have been largely ignored. These facets make up the larger factors and are generally better predictors of behavior than the factors alone. Although no consensus currently exists regarding the number of facets or what...

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, impression management and self‐presentation are distinct and important concepts in everyday life. Impression management refers to any impression to a person or group desires to convey to another person or group of people. Subsumed within impression management, self‐presentation refers to acts aimed...

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, impression management and self‐presentation are distinct and important concepts in everyday life. Impression management refers to any impression to a person or group desires to convey to another person or group of people. Subsumed within impression management, self‐presentation refers to acts aimed...

Despite the pervasiveness of the Five Factor Model in personality research and in many practical applications, the lower‐order facets have been largely ignored. These facets make up the larger factors and are generally better predictors of behavior than the factors alone. Although no consensus currently exists regarding the number of facets or what...

Recent research suggests self-connection relates to various aspects of well-being, yet it is not understood what factors stop us from connecting with ourselves. This qualitative study seeks to understand the barriers that prevent people from obtaining an awareness of the self, acceptance of that self, and acting in alignment with the self. Twenty-s...

To rule out an alternative to their structural-fit hypothesis, Payne, Burkley, and Stokes (2008) demonstrated that correlations between implicit and explicit race attitudes were weaker when participants were put under high pressure to respond without bias than when they were placed under low pressure. This effect was replicated in Italy by Vianello...

Educators are becoming increasingly concerned about the high rates of burnout among their students. Although the solution may appear to be reducing the stress their students experience, simply reducing stress is a temporary solution and does not help students when they enter the workforce and encounter increased stressors. A better option may be to...

Research suggests that self-connection (i.e., an awareness of oneself, acceptance of that self, and alignment between oneself and one’s behaviors) is an important part of well-being, yet there is scarce research on the experience of self-disconnection. The aim of this study was to understand the emotional experience of self-disconnection and the wa...

Background: Researchers have rarely examined mindfulness and meaning in a way that informs the causality and directionality of this relationship. The current research examines this relationship across time, further validates the Self-Connection Scale (SCS), and examines the role of self-connection in both moderating and mediating this relationship...

Although careless respondents have wreaked havoc on research for decades, the prevalence and implications of these participants has likely increased due to many new methodological techniques currently in use. Across three studies, we examined the prevalence of careless responding in participants, several means of predicting careless respondents, an...

The current research sought to better understand the effect of mindfulness on well-being by examining self-connection as a potential mediator. We define self-connection as: (1) an awareness of oneself, (2) an acceptance of oneself based on this awareness, and (3) an alignment of one’s behavior with this awareness. Based on this definition, we measu...

Replications in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If replications use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data collection peer...

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories....

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories....

Despite the persistent gender gap in many organizational leadership positions, researchers have not yet examined objective predictors of this gap. A fully crossed 3 (Role Prime: leader, follower, control) × 2 (Gender Prime: present, absent) × 2 (Sex: male, female) experimental design examined the effect of group role (i.e., leader or follower) and...

Perceivers often view individuals described as “warm” to be generally positive and individuals described as “cold” to be generally negative. Consistent with the tenets of Construal Level Theory, McCarthy and Skowronski (2011) demonstrated this difference was larger among perceivers who were instructed the information was psychologically distant rat...

The sex difference in jealousy is an effect that has generated significant controversy in the academic literature (resulting in two meta-analyses that reached different conclusions on the presence or absence of the effect). In this study, we had a team of researchers from different theoretical perspectives use identical protocols to test whether th...

Although social situations are enjoyable for most people, they cause extreme anxiety in others. To better understand individual differences in social anxiety, researchers have designed scales, such as the 15-item Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS; Leary, 1983), to measure people’s anxiousness in social situations. Despite the importance of measuri...

In contexts that increasingly demand brief self-report measures (e.g., experience sampling, longitudinal and field studies), researchers seek succinct surveys that maintain reliability and validity. One such measure is the 12-item Brief Aggression Questionnaire (BAQ; Webster et al., 2014), which uses 4 3-item subscales: Physical Aggression, Verbal...

At the core of any causal claim is an experimental study, and laboratory research often provides the most valid arena for conducting experiments. Laboratory experiments allow researchers to provide internal validity to any phenomena they examine. However, researchers must consider and address certain methodological concerns when conducting lab rese...

People sometimes seek to convey discrepant impressions of themselves to different audiences simultaneously. Research suggests people are generally successful in this "multiple audience problem." Adding to previous research, the current research sought to examine factors that may limit this success by measuring social anxiety and placing participant...

Purpose – To determine how leadership experience affects the value leaders place on leadership traits. In particular, we sought to determine if individuals with different amounts of leadership experience deferentially desire traits related to dominance and cooperation. Design/methodology/approach – Participants reported the importance of dominant a...

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal ov...

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal ov...

Trying to remember something now typically improves your ability to remember it later. However, after watching a video of a simulated bank robbery, participants who verbally described the robber were 25% worse at identifying the robber in a lineup than were participants who instead listed U.S. states and capitals—this has been termed the “verbal ov...

A key problem facing aggression research is how to measure individual differences in aggression accurately and efficiently without sacrificing reliability or validity. Researchers are increasingly demanding brief measures of aggression for use in applied settings, field studies, pretest screening, longitudinal, and daily diary studies. The authors...

Although past research has documented the prevalence of misconceptions in introductory psychology classes, few studies have assessed how readily upper-level undergraduate and graduate students endorse erroneous beliefs about the discipline. In Study 1, we administered a 30-item misconception test to an international sample of 670 undergraduate, mas...

It is a common problem in psychology subject pools for past study participants to inform future participants of key experimental details (also known as crosstalk). Previous research (Edlund, Sagarin, Skowronski, Johnson, & Kutter, 2009) demonstrated that a combined classroom and laboratory treatment could significantly reduce crosstalk. The present...

Despite the applicability of the preference for consistency (PFC) scale to multiple real-world settings, the large number of items limits its use in field studies. To ease this restriction, we constructed and tested a single-item measure (i.e., the single-item need for consistency scale-SIN-C). Through three studies (N ~ 1000), we examined the conc...

How are people's social policy attitudes related to their affective reactions to the social groups affected by those policies? From a threat-based perspective. specific emotions toward a group-above and beyond general prejudice toward that group-should predict attitudes toward a policy affecting the group To test this. 128 participants reported the...

Past research has failed to adequately address the lack of handwashing in public restrooms. The current research explores possibilities for using psychology in the design of effective handwashing interventions. Specifically, we (1) examined how reported handwashing differs from actual behavior and (2) determined how a sign can increase handwashing...

To conduct a literature review of the relationship between personality and driving performance among middle-aged and older adults. We searched for relevant literature using Web of Science, PsycInfo, and PubMed and consulted with experts for recently published literature not yet catalogued in those databases. Using the American Academy of Neurology'...

A convenience sample of 50 older drivers (Mage = 73.14, SD = 4.85) completed the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator� (MBTI�) Step III™ instrument and rated their own driving abilities (compared to all other drivers, same age drivers, and their own driving 20 years prior) and their ability to perform 68 specific driving-related behaviors. Each subject’s d...

Comments on an article by J. J. Arnett (see record 2008-14338-003 ) regarding the assertion that American psychology focuses too narrowly on Americans while neglecting the other 95% of the world’s population. The authors argue that while Arnett’s assessment was poignant, and his call for a more inclusive, international, and cross-cultural represent...

In this study we examined pain and disability in 115 community-dwelling, urban, older adults (mean age = 74 years; 52% Black, 48% White). Participants completed a survey of pain (pain presence, intensity, locations, and duration) and disability (Sickness Impact Profile). Sixty percent of the sample reported pain; Black and White adults did not diff...

Pain is a common problem for many older adults, with up to 50% of community-dwelling and 70% to 80% of nursing home residents experiencing pain regularly. Effective pain management requires thorough assessment, appropriate intervention, and systematic reassessment. Pain assessment, however, is complicated by dementia, which impairs memory, reasonin...