Dominique Muller

Université Grenoble Alpes · Department of Psychology

Collective action is a powerful tool for social change and is fundamental to women and girls’ empowerment on a societal level. Collective action towards gender equality could be understood as intentional and conscious civic behaviors focused on social transformation, questioning power relations, and promoting gender equality through collective effo...

Objective Despite their potential in improving health behaviors, such as physical activity (PA), the effectiveness of interventions targeting automatic precursors remains contrasted. We examined the effects of a single session of ABC training – a personalized consequence-based approach-avoidance training – on PA, relative to an active control condi...

The relationship between heaviness of use and the approach bias (i.e., stronger approach than avoidance tendencies) toward tobacco remains ambiguous at both theoretical and empirical levels. Indeed, some models of addition would formulate opposite predictions (i.e., positive vs. negative relationship) and, as it turns out, current evidence is mixed...

Objective. Despite their role in health behaviors, such as physical activity (PA), the effectiveness of interventions targeting automatic precursors remains inconsistent. We examined the effects of a single session of ABC training – a personalized and consequence-based approach-avoidance training – on PA, relative to an active control condition and...

Social role theory posits that binary gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in less egalitarian countries, reflecting these countries’ more pronounced sex-based power divisions. Conversely, evolutionary and self-construal theorists suggest that gender gaps in agency and communion should be larger in more egalitarian countries, reflec...

Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. These studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations in both healthy and clinical populations; however, they have suffered from several issues including generally low sample sizes and a la...

Background: Social comparisons between pupils are especially relevant at school. Such comparisons influence self-perception and performance. When pupils evaluate themselves more negatively and perform worse after an upward comparison (with a better off pupil) than a downward comparison (with a worse-off pupil), this is a contrast effect. On the ot...

Precarious manhood beliefs portray manhood, relative to womanhood, as a social status that is hard to earn, easy to lose, and proven via public action. Here, we present cross-cultural data on a brief measure of precarious manhood beliefs (the Precarious Manhood Beliefs scale [PMB]) that covaries meaningfully with other cross-culturally validated ge...

Le comportement d’approche et d’évitement est une réponse étroitement liée à notre expérience sensorimotrice et constitue donc un bon exemple du caractère incarné de la cognition. Les premières tâches visant à mesurer les réactions d’approche/évitement ont cherché à reproduire l’expérience motrice associée à ces réactions en se focalisant sur les m...

Kawakami et al. (2008) offer an approach training intervention to strengthen women's implicit identification with math. This intervention is especially interesting regarding data suggesting that the low implicit identification with math among women and the gender gap in science reinforce each other (Nosek et al., 2009). Nevertheless, Kawakami et al...

Men sometimes withdraw support for gender equality movements when their higher gender status is threatened. Here, we expand the focus of this phenomenon by examining it cross‐culturally, to test if both individual‐ and country‐level variables predict men's collective action intentions to support gender equality. We tested a model in which men's zer...

Approach/avoidance paradigms could constitute an interesting alternative in measuringintergroup attitudes, notably if they overcome one criticism often addressed toward classic indirect tasks: measuring attitudes beyond the influence of cultural knowledge. Using intergroup stimuli and a population likely to be exposed to a similar cultural knowledg...

Approach/avoidance paradigms could constitute an interesting alternative in measuring intergroup attitudes, notably if they overcome one criticism often addressed toward classic indirect tasks: measuring attitudes beyond the influence of cultural knowledge. Using intergroup stimuli and a population likely to be exposed to a similar cultural knowled...

In light of current concerns with replicability and reporting false-positive effects in psychology, we examine Type I errors and power associated with 2 distinct approaches for the assessment of mediation, namely the component approach (testing individual parameter estimates in the model) and the index approach (testing a single mediational index)....

The political orientation of others can be perceived above chance level from looks alone. However, the effect is usually small and there is considerable interpersonal variance. We propose that the ability to accurately perceive others' political orientation is highest for those who hold more extreme political views themselves, as compared to people...

In France, when studying intergroup relations between ethnicities, one usually contrasts Caucasian and North African individuals. Despite the presence of a large number of face databases in the literature, none of them contains Caucasian and North African faces similar to faces we can find in a usual French environment. To overcome this problem, we...

Sociolinguistic studies generally focus on specific sociolinguistic variables. Consequently, they rarely examine whether different sociolinguistic variables have coherent orientation in a specific language variety (a social or a regional dialect) or whether the speakers freely mix sociolinguistic variants. While different attempts have been made to...

Because approach/avoidance is a crucial response to environmental stimuli, this type of action should have left its trace on our sensorimotor system. Recent work, however, downplayed the role of sensorimotor information in producing approach/avoidance compatibility effects (i.e., faster response times to approach positive stimuli and avoid negative...

Can conspiracy theories be a source of social stigma? If it is true, it would follow that people may expect to be socially excluded when they express endorsement of conspiracy theories. This effect should be partially explained by the knowledge of the negative perceptions associated with conspiracy theories. In Study 1, inducing French internet use...

Can conspiracy theories be a source of social stigma? If it is true, it would follow that people may expect to be socially excluded when they express endorsement of conspiracy theories. This effect should be partially explained by the knowledge of the negative perceptions associated with conspiracy theories. In Study 1, inducing French internet use...

Can conspiracy theories be a source of social stigma? If it is true, it would follow that people may expect to be socially excluded when they express endorsement of conspiracy theories. This effect should be partially explained by the knowledge of the negative perceptions associated with conspiracy theories. In Study 1, inducing French internet use...

In the current research, we investigated whether belief in conspiracy theories satisfies people’s need for uniqueness. We found that the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories was associated with the feeling of possessing scarce information about the situations explained by the conspiracy theories (Study 1) and higher need for uniqueness (Study...

Previous studies suggest that ancient (i.e. evolutionary-based) threats capture attention because human beings possess an inborn module shaped by evolution and dedicated to their detection. An alternative account proposes that a key feature predicting whether a stimulus will capture attention is its relevance rather than its ontology (i.e. phylogen...

In the current research, we investigated whether belief in conspiracy theories satisfies people’s need for uniqueness. We found that the tendency to believe in conspiracy theories was associated with the feeling of possessing scarce information about the situations explained by the conspiracy theories (Study 1) and higher need for uniqueness (Study...

Following the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack that happened on January 7th 2015, around 4 million people gathered all over France in a rally of national unity. Soon, however, critics argued that those who participated to the rallies publicly displayed antiracist attitudes, but were driven by implicit prejudice toward Muslims. Our study addresses the...

Good self-control has been linked to adaptive outcomes such as better health, cohesive personal relationships, success in the workplace and at school, and less susceptibility to crime and addictions. In contrast, self-control failure is linked to maladaptive outcomes. Understanding the mechanisms by which self-control predicts behavior may assist i...

De nombreuses recherches menées sur les effets du pouvoir social considèrent celui-ci comme une force corruptrice. L’impact du pouvoir a été montré dans le recours aux stéréotypes (Vescio et al., 2009), à la discrimination (Kipnis, 1976), ou encore à l’agressivité en réponse à une menace (Fast & Chen, 2009). Dans cette perspective, le but de la pré...

January 7th 2015, an Islamist terrorist group attacked the office of the satirical weekly news paper Charlie Hebdo. Several shootings killing in the end 17 people later followed this attack. In response to these attacks, around 4 million people gathered all over France in a rally of national unity. Many people participating in these rallies explici...

We designed, in French and in English, a single-item scale to measure people’s general tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. The validity and reliability of this scale was assessed in 3 studies (total N = 555). In Study 1 ( N = 152), positive correlations between the single-item scale and 3 other conspiracy belief scales on a French student s...

Do people feel better or worse about themselves when working with someone who is better than they are? We present the first replication of the work of Stapel and Koomen (2005), who showed that being in a competitive vs. cooperative mindset moderates the effects of social comparison on self-evaluation. In Experiment 1, we present a close replication...

RÉSUMÉ Le pouvoir entrainerait une désinhibition, suggérant que les personnes en situation de pouvoir sont moins tributaires des normes sociales. Le but de la présente recherche est d'étudier les effets du pouvoir sur les comportements de triche par le biais de méthodes incarnées. Cinquante sept étudiants d'une université française ont participé à...

To evaluate their schoolwork, children often engage in comparison with classmates. But what is the effect of these comparisons on self-evaluation and performance? Previous work by Fayant et al. (2011) leads us to hypothesize that the impact of upward vs. downward comparison is moderated by the approach vs. avoidance mindset: an approach mindset sho...

Previous research has shown that being ostracized by members of a despised outgroup is as hurtful as being ostracized by ingroup members (Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2007). In the current study, we conduct a direct replication of the Gonsalkorale and Williams's study and also investigate whether this (lack of) effect is due to the way negative consequ...

Does a visual mask need to be perceptually present to disrupt processing? The present re- search proposed to explore the link between perceptual and memory mechanisms by demonstrating that a typical sensory phenomenon (visual masking) can be replicated at a memory level. Experiment 1 highlighted an interference effect of a visual mask on the catego...

Newly measured rating norms provide a database of emotion-related dimensions for 524 French trait words. Measures include valence, approach/avoidance tendencies associated with the trait, possessor- and other-relevance of the trait, and discrete emotions conveyed by the trait (i.e., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness). The normative data...

Who is more likely to behave aggressively? Is it someone outperformed by others or is it someone who outperformed others? For safety reasons, it is important to know the answer to this question. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were told that they did worse or better than an ostensible partner on a first task. Then they aggressed against this partn...

Drawing on decades of research suggesting an attentional advantage for self-related information, researchers generally assume that self-related stimuli automatically capture attention. However, a literature review reveals that this claim has not been systematically examined. We aimed to fill in this dearth of evidence. Following a feature-based acc...

The authors provide evidence that social ethics claims on food packaging (e.g., fair trade) can promote the misperception that foods are lower-calorie and therefore appropriate for greater consumption. In Study 1, participants evaluating chocolate provided lower calorie judgments when it was described as fair trade—a claim silent on calorie content...

This research shows that people can unconsciously initiate and follow arithmetic rules (e.g., addition). Participants were asked to detect whether a symbol was a digit. This symbol was preceded by 2 digits and a subliminal instruction: add or a control instruction. Participants were faster at identifying a symbol as a number when the symbol was equ...

Abstract. Recent data show that psychosocial factors affect visual perception. We tested this hypothesis by investigating the relationship between affective closeness and the perception of apertures between two people. People feel discomfort when they are near someone they are not affectively close to. Therefore, we predict that they will be less l...

Could it be that walking toward (vs. away) someone else changes your self-evaluation in the direction of what this person is? We answer positively and argue that approach movements lead to self-evaluative assimilation (a higher self-evaluation with a high vs. a low standard), while avoidance movements lead to self-evaluative contrast (a lower self-...

Being inferior to someone else can be hurtful. But what exactly happens when we found ourselves in such situations? We first address why and when upward comparison can be self-threatening and later review the effects of such threatening social comparison. We argue that two main kinds of disturbances can ensue: affective disturbances and attentional...

Numerous studies have shown that alcohol increases aggression. In this article it is proposed that the link between alcohol and aggression is so strong that mere exposure to alcohol-related cues will automatically activate aggressive thoughts and behaviors. Two experiments tested this automaticity theory of alcohol-related aggression. In Experiment...

The physiological and expectancy effects of alcohol consumption on the aggressive behavior of 116 general-population males aged 18–45 years were analyzed separately in a naturalistic field experiment using a 3 × 3 Balanced Placebo Design (BPD). Participants were given a non-alcoholic drink, a drink targeting a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of ....

Given the dramatic shifts in societal norms to curb overt stereotyping and prejudice, these biases may leak out in more subtle ways than were apparent in the past. Accordingly, we examined how the suppression of stereotypes might affect post-suppression category-based stereotyping and the more subtle feature-based stereotyping. In support of our pr...

In a simple mediation model, the effect of a manipulated variable X on a dependent variable Y over and above the effect of the mediator Me can be estimated by regressing Y on X and Me. The impact of X on Y in such a model is adjusted for the relationship both between X and Me and between Me and Y. The authors examine the adjustment function in the...

This article contends that the presence of a coactor leads to a focusing effect whenever this presence represents a threat or a potential threat to self-evaluation. Experiment 1 showed that attentional focusing appears in the presence of an actual (in the case of upward comparison) or potential (in the case of mere coaction) threat to self-evaluati...

The present research examines whether mastery and performance goals predict different ways of reacting to a sociocognitive conflict with another person over materials to be learned, an issue not yet addressed by the achievement goal literature. Results from 2 studies showed that mastery goals predicted epistemic conflict regulation (a conflict regu...

Ce chapitre présente une série de travaux qui montrent que la compétition, bien qu’étant le principal mode de relations sociales promu dans les systèmes éducatifs, entraîne des processus cognitifs de focalisation qui sont hautement nuisibles à l’apprentissage, et ceci à plusieurs niveaux. A un niveau cognitif, un axe de recherche montre comment une...

Making decisions and acting in exceptional, high-risk and extreme situations This article outlines the main lessons to be learned from social psychology research into making decisions and acting in exceptional, high-risk and extreme situations. After having defined the three main psychological dimensions to these situations (uncertainty, lack of co...

To determine the protective effect of 'belief in a just world for self' (BJW-S) on hostile attributional bias, 379 adolescents aged 10-16 years, previously identified by teacher ratings as high or low troublemakers, were presented with a hypothetical frustrating situation where the intent of the frustrating agent appeared either benign, hostile, or...

Procedures for examining whether treatment effects on an outcome are mediated and/or moderated have been well developed and are routinely applied. The mediation question focuses on the intervening mechanism that produces the treatment effect. The moderation question focuses on factors that affect the magnitude of the treatment effect. It is importa...

The research in this article explores the structure and content of attributed intergroup beliefs: to what extent do perceivers think others of their ingroup and their outgroup display intergroup evaluative bias and outgroup homogeneity? We report studies that address this question in ethnicity, gender, and nationality intergroup contexts. In all of...

Résumé : Dans cet article, nous rapportons deux recherches portant sur la structure et le contenu de stéréotypes attribués à autrui : dans quelle mesure pensons-nous que les membres de l'endogroupe et de l'exogroupe font preuve de favoritisme pro-endogroupe et de biais d'homogénéité de l'exogroupe ? Ces deux recherches menées dans le contexte des r...

The authors investigated how a collective self-construal orientation in combination with positive social comparisons "turns off" the negative effects of stereotype threat. Specifically, Experiment 1 demonstrated that stereotype threat led to increased accessibility of participants' collective self ("we"). Experiment 2 showed that this feeling of "w...

This article proposes an integration of Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory and Baron’s (1986) distraction–conflict theory of the social facilitation–inhibition effect, which successfully predicts attentional focusing in coaction when social comparison represents a distraction. Two experiments confronted participants with the illusory conju...

A common design in social psychology involves the use of two independent variables, an experimental manipulation and a measured individual difference, and the interest is in the interaction between them. In such designs, there are often obvious co-variate(s), correlated with the measured independent variable, which the researcher wishes to control....

Research on social comparison has shown that people often declare themselves better than the average person (e.g., Alicke, Klotz, Breitenbecher, Yurak, & Vredenburg, 1995). However, Alicke et al. (1995) also showed that, when the comparison target is a specific person, people hesitate to assert their superiority. Thus, people are more reluctant to...