Brett Mercier

• Postdoc at University of Toronto

For a set of 10 conditions (e.g. homosexuality, obesity, drug addiction), we explored associations between moral judgments, agency evaluations, and perceptions that a condition is a mental illness. In a preregistered study ( n = 1,249 U.S. adults), we found that perceptions of lower agency were associated with decreased moral wrongness judgments, a...

In four preregistered studies (total N = 5,067), we investigated whether people use their own anticipated affective responses to a situation to make judgments about the praiseworthiness of helping and the moral character of helpers. We found that helpers in more affectively arousing scenarios were seen as more morally motivated, received greater pr...

In four preregistered studies (total N = 5,067), we investigated whether people use their own anticipated affective responses to a situation to make judgments about the praiseworthiness of helping and the moral character of helpers. We found that helpers in more affectively-arousing scenarios were seen as more morally motivated, received greater pr...

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries...

Four studies show that Democrats overestimate the explicit prejudice reported by the American electorate, leading them to perceive presidential candidates from disadvantaged groups as less electable. Study 1 (MTurk; n = 728) found that Democrats overestimated the percentage of Americans who say they would not vote for presidential candidates from d...

The novel Coronavirus that spread around the world in early 2020 triggered a global pandemic and economic downturn that affected nearly everyone. Yet the crisis had a disproportionate impact on the poor and revealed how easily working-class individuals' financial security can be destabilised by factors beyond personal control. In a pre-registered l...

Replication studies in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If these studies 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-collecti...

The novel Coronavirus that spread around the world in early 2020 triggered a global pandemic and economic downturn that affected nearly everyone. Yet the crisis had a disproportionate impact on the poor and revealed how easily working-class individuals’ financial security can be destabilised by factors beyond personal control. In a pre-registered l...

In Experiment 5 of Albarracín et al. (2008), participants primed with words associated with action performed better on a subsequent cognitive task than did participants primed with words associated with inaction. A direct replication attempt by Frank, Kim, and Lee (2016) as part of the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P) failed to find evide...

Amidst rising economic inequality and mounting evidence of its pernicious social effects, what motivates opposition to inequality? Five studies (n = 34,442) show that attributing poverty to situational forces is associated with greater concern about inequality, preference for egalitarian policies and inequality-reducing behaviour. In Study 1, situa...

Does belief in free will increase support for economic inequality? Five studies using diverse measures and methods tested this question. Study 1 finds belief in free will is associated with increased support for inequality. Study 2 manipulates belief in free will and does not find evidence that this changes support for inequality. Studies 3 and 4 f...

Three studies show that Democrats overestimate the explicit prejudice of the American electorate, and thus see disadvantaged groups as less electable. Study 1 found that Democrats underestimated the percentage of Americans who say they would vote for presidential candidates from disadvantaged groups. Study 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated...

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...

Past research has documented myriad pernicious psychological effects of high economic inequality, prompting interest into how people perceive, evaluate, and react to inequality. Here we propose, refine, and validate the Support for Economic Inequality Scale (SEIS)–a novel measure of attitudes towards economic inequality. In Study 1, we distill eigh...

Belief in a god or gods is a central feature in the lives of billions, and a topic of perennial interest within psychology. However, research over the last half decade has achieved a new level of understanding regarding both the ultimate and proximate causes of belief in God. Ultimate causes—the evolutionary influences on a trait —shed light on the...

In five studies, we test whether belief in free will influences support for economic inequality. Study 1 shows that on a country-level, belief in free will is correlated with support for economic inequality. Study 2 demonstrates that individuals with stronger belief in free will are more likely to support inequality. In Studies 3 and 4, we manipula...

Objective: We test whether prejudice can influence lay attributions of mental illness to perpetrators of violence. Specifically, we examine whether people with negative attitudes toward Muslims perceive Muslim mass shooters as less mentally ill than non-Muslim shooters. Method: Study 1 compares attributions of mental illness to Muslim and non-Musli...

Economic inequality is a defining issue of the 21st century. Past research has documented myriad pernicious psychological effects of high inequality, and prompted interest into how people perceive, evaluate, and react to economic inequality. Here we propose, refine, and validate the Support for Economic Inequality Scale (SEIS) – a novel measure of...

In several studies, we test whether Muslim mass shooters are perceived as less mentally ill than non-Muslim shooters. In Study 1, we find that historical non-Muslim mass shooters are seen as more driven by mental illness compared to Muslim shooters. This effect only occurred among those who view Muslims negatively. In Study 2, we experimentally sho...

Past research finds that people hold moderate views on political issues while believing others are extreme. This false polarization has been demonstrated across a variety of different attitude dimensions and is explained by naive realism, the belief that one holds an unbiased view of reality. We argue that because people believe they see the world...

Modern world religions are steeped in moralizing. This chapter argues that this conspicuous feature of religion can be explained by the common functions of both religion and morality to regulate individuals’ behavior in the ultimate service of the group. Cultural evolution selected for religious elements that synergistically work together to morall...